


Little Red Riding Hood and The Big Bad Wolf

by malandrina, TheodoreR



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Anchors, Angst, Denial, Enemies to Lovers, Fluff, IED, Jealous Liam, Jealous Theo, M/M, Pack Bonding, Protective Liam, Sharing Clothes, Sharing a Room, Slow Burn, Spooning, Thiam, minor sterek, they kiss a lot and don't talk about it, until they do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-05-30 19:41:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 60,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15103616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malandrina/pseuds/malandrina, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheodoreR/pseuds/TheodoreR
Summary: "What the hell ishedoing here?"This is a question Liam too has often asked himself, and the fact that his ex-girlfriend suddenly came back from another state to ask him as well doesn't help him find an answer. What the hell is Theo doing there? With them? There is no immediate and logical answer, Theo isthereand that's enough.______Theo has pursued the dream of perfection for so long, years and years, he literally stole his sister's heart to become the perfect evil the Dread Doctors dreamed of, and everything that attracts him now, thatreallyattracs him, instinctively and viscerally, it's the furthest from perfection he could ever imagined. It's the unusual, the detail out of place, it's the muddy boots under the skirt of little red riding hood.





	1. PROLOGUE

**Author's Note:**

> Translation of my fic "Cappuccetto Rosso e il Lupo Cattivo",  
> aka my first Thiam ever, published long ago in the italian fandom. Especially the first chapters are pretty bad, I kinda like it since...the tenth. Yep, just half of the story.  
> I'm not used to translate and I'm not particularly good at it, I think it's so much better if I write directly in English or if it stays in italian, so I still don't know if I'll make it to the end (the latest chapters are pretty long), but I wanted to give it a try, so let me know if you'd like the rest.

 

Since Scott and the others forgot his existence after the defeat of the Ghost Riders, Theo decided to keep a low profile: it's not a secret that he killed Tracy and Josh, but the sheriff doesn’t seem to remember it and the last thing Theo plans to do is reminding him by ripping his two man’s throats out. Not that the idea isn’t appealing, sure, because those bastards keep waking him up every single morning by stroking insistently on the glass and pointing the torch straight at his face, no matter which lost corner of Beacon Hills Theo decides to park in, they always find him. At first he tried to get away from the center of the city, to the most remote places on the periphery, but when the two reached him even at the edge of the woods, in the middle of the night, he simply decided not to try anymore, and that’s why he’s now in one of the most central residential neighborhood of the city

Normally he would just put the engine back on, but the beam of blinding light pointed straight in his eyes, the still dark sky beyond the car window and the lampshades light inform him that this time the two assholes didn’t let him sleep not even until the sunrise and Theo just can’t take it anymore.

The plan, while he gets out of the car, raged, it’s _not_ to open their throat with his teeth, for all the aforementioned reasons, but neither is to _not_ do it. After all, there is nothing to keep him in Beacon Hills, if things get out of hand with those two he can simply jump into the car and drive away for good.

"Alright, do we keep pretending that you don’t have an unhealthy obsession for me or what?" 

 

*

 

The neighborhood in which he lives with his family has always been one of the quietest in the city, not like the one where Scott lives, or Lydia, or Stiles, those are dangerous neighborhoods, always with ongoing firing and attacks of supernatural beings, it’s there or at school or even at the hospital that Liam goes to when he has dangerous and potentially deadly stuff to do, when he’s kidnapped or when he just wants to throw himself in the middle of the action, but never at home because in his neighborhood nothing ever happens, the most exciting event that happened for awhile is the nursing of the neighbor's cat.

Being this the case, when loud voices come to the window of his room, as if someone is furiously fighting in the street, Liam immediately opens his eyes. He’s not bothered by being awakened in the middle of the night, he’s actually almost excited that perhaps something will finally happen to him, perhaps for once _he_ will have to call the reinforcements and get the rest of the pack right in his neighborhood. Maybe it’s the Anukite again, or maybe some other mysterious creature whose existence they still don’t know about, maybe Liam will be the Lydia of the group this time and he’ll have to give the announcement of a new danger to the pack, or maybe, maybe it's just a trivial fight for a car parked where not allowed. It’s the last option, of course, and Liam is about to move away from the window with disappointment, when the guy on the street makes a strange exasperated noise that sounds a little like a roar, before going back to insulting the two cops, and that's when Liam recognizes him.

_What the hell is Theo Raeken doing in front of his house?_

 

 *

 

"And where should I sleep, let’s hear. Show me a place, _just_ one where I can park my car in peace, without having to wake up with your ugly faces in front of me and I swear--"

"It’s not our business to tell you where to sleep, kid, our job is simply pointing out where you _cannot_ do it, here for precision."

It's done, it's settled.

Theo is not even angry anymore, now that he has decided to stop holding it. He’ll start from the tall one, the last one who has spoken, and it’ll not be a quick thing. As he feels the claws pushing against his fingertips, ready to come out, he’s already thinking of some witty words to say immediately after slipping his throat open, something like "You can’t die here, you have to move further" and then he’ll make a cool smile watching him suffocate in the blood and he’s so distracted by planning evil things that he doesn’t even hear the door of the house opening.

"What’s going on?"

It’s Liam, the angry beta of Scott’s pack, Theo recognizes him right away. He’s in pajamas and he’s not even wearing shoes, a pair of bright red socks standing out in the dark night.

"This homeless kid was sleeping in your property, that's what’s happening."

The fat one, however, will have his eyes rip out, since he doesn’t use them anyway, obviously, or he’d be able to distinguish where the home's driveway ends and where the pickup tires start.

The two assholes are both turned towards Liam and neither of them sees Theo's eyes becoming blue, nor the claws coming out of his hand, but Liam notices it and suddenly he’s right in front of him.

"No, no, don’t worry, he's my friend, you can go."

The two insist a bit, probably because they have cast out Theo around town for weeks and know very well he doesn’t have a friend in the world, but when Theo parks the car a meter further, inside Liam's property, they’re forced to let go. Theo throws a triumphant glance as they dry away.

"I can’t believe it, the first time I see you in months and you're trying to kill two cops. You're always the same." Liam throws a glare of judgment, apparently oblivious to the fact that he can’t judge people while wearing those socks.

"They’re not cops, they’re stalkers, okay? They keep following me wherever I park. They _want_ me to kill them, no point in postponing, I might as well do it right now. "

Theo is about to get back in the car, but Liam stops him.

"Nobody kills anyone," he says peremptory. "And why don’t you sleep in a house, like normal people do?"

"Yeah, genius, which house?"

"...yours?"

"And where would it be?"

 

 *

 

Liam knows where Theo's home is and he knows it because months ago he and Stiles spent three hours spying on him from the window and watching him play video games, but for some reason it doesn’t seems a dignified thing to admit.

"It would be strange if I knew where you live, don’t you think? I don’t know it of course, but I'm sure you lived somewhere when you came back to town months ago. "

"Yeah, well, it may look strange to you, Liam, but when you hostage a couple for months and force them to pretend to be your parents and break their hands with a hammer, it never ends all sunshine and rainbows like in movies with them offering to actually adopt you. "

Liam stares at the boy in front of him for several seconds, silently.

"I don’t know what kind of movies you've been watching in your life, Theo."

Theo snorts, getting back in the car. Liam looks uncertain.

"So where are you going?"

Theo starts the car.

"Somewhere to sleep."

"They'll find you again."

"Likely."

_He's my responsibility._

"Get out."

"Excuse me?"

"Inside."

Theo rises an eyebrow and Liam clears his throat.

"I mean, get out of the car and come inside. You're staying here tonight. "

Liam doesn’t know if this is what Scott would do if he was still in town, actually he’s pretty sure it’s not, like not at all, but on the other hand he knows what Scott _wouldn’t_ do, which is letting Theo kill two cops.

Liam smiles, proud of himself: he’s _totally_ gonna slay this Alpha in training thing.

 

 *

 

It was a while since Theo had a hot shower.

He hears the bathroom door opening at one point and he immediately stiffens, his muscles tight and the claws ready to hit, but when he comes out dripping, soon after, he doesn’t find the sheriff or anyone from Echo House to take him away, under the supervision of Scott and Liam, but only a pair of jumpsuit trousers and a gray shirt resting on the cabin next to the sink,  near the towels.

The t-shirt tightens a lot and has Liam's scent. Under the pants, he finds a pair of slippers of a dazzling blue like the ones Liam was wearing. He wears them shaking his head, the first true smile from several months.

 

 


	2. First Night (no sex)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Theo moves too much in his sleep and Liam regrets this already.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your comments guys, I translated chapter 2 as well, feel free to let me know how it is!

 

Liam is already not pleased to have been forced by his conscience - _he's my responsibility_ \- to offer a roof over the head to one of the people he likes less in the whole universe, but when the first rays of sunshine peek out the blue curtains of his room and Theo continues to roll and breathe heavily a few steps away from him, Liam reaches a whole new level of discontent.

He had taken into account the probability of not closing his eyes, lying unconscious and unprotected just a few yards away from Theo Reaken is not something his survival instinct finds advisable. What he hadn’t realized, on the other hand, is that Theo would have kept him awake not because of the threat he is, but because he apparently doesn’t know how to sleep: he continues to twist and snort and emit other bizarre sounds and Liam can’t sleep if Theo continues to move because it would mean not being able to catch suspicious movements towards his bed, since every single noise from Theo is already suspecious. The pillow he threw few hours before is lying on the ground abandoned, right next to the old mattress that his mother pulled out of the cellar, as well as the blanket that was scalded away during ... whatever Theo is doing.

Liam has different hypotheses about it and has so many  because he had countless hours to think about it, unable to sleep. The first is that he is pretending for some malicious purpose, purpose that Liam, unprovided of an evil and machiavellic mind like Theo's, can’t see. The second hypothesis is that Theo is used to sleep on the mountain of lies he leaves behind and on the bleeding bodies of the casualties he procures, directly or indirectly, and so he probably finds the innocent surface of house Dunbar's mattress uncomfortable. The third, the most realistic one, is that Theo is dreaming of killing or brutally beating somebody, perhaps Liam himself, and this explains the persistent puffs, the bleak breath, and the rough movements. The most frustrating thing in this whole situation is that if Liam is the one Theo is punching in his sleep, well, then Liam is probably losing big time, because Theo doesn’t even cacth his breath for a moment. It’s not a tragedy, Liam knows it: losing a match in the unconscious of others is not a real defeat, except that that is his home, his room and Theo is wearing his fucking socks and what sick person you have to be to dream of knocking the fuck out of the owner of the socks you’re wearing? There are definitely rules about it, it can’t be _not_ forbidden what Theo is doing and so Liam has every right to defend himself, even though his opponent is sleeping.

His first instinct, when he gets up, is to launch himself on Theo and land on him with his full weight and a knee stuck in his belly. The second instinct, while walking silently acrooss the room toward the mattress on the floor, is to give him a firm punch in his mouth, so next time he’ll think twice before biting the hand that lends him socks. The third instinct, as he bends over the chimera, is the one subjected to the control of his morality, which leads him to grasp his wrist and fasten it quickly to a position of submission, so as to win the match without actually attacking a an unaware and asleep opponent. Except that as soon as his fingers close around his wrist, Theo, far from being defensless, immediately finds a way to hurt him.

Surprise and pain intertwine in Liam's body as he pulls out his arm, ready to defend himself without even knowing from what. But Theo is still sleeping and he keeps panting with a grimace on his face and Liam can hardly see the black veins on his arm, in the little lighted room. It takes him a few seconds to realize it, standing in the middle of the room, and even when he understands it he still doesn’t really understand: Theo is sleeping and Liam has just unintentionally absorbed his pain, that's what happened. His first thought is that after all Liam was not really losing the match in the dream. It’s a stupid thought of course, it doesn't matter who is winning in Theo's head, no dream can be so vivid as to creates real physical pain and tangible to the point that it can even be transferred. It doesn’t make sense, the whole thing, starting with the asshole that literally killed his Alpha being in his room, continuing with the fact that this asshole seems in agony without any reason in the world and ending with the absurdity of such pain that passes from Theo to Liam so easily, like it's nothing. It doesn’t work like that, Liam hasn't been a werewolf for a long time, but Scott taught him: as a matter of fact, one has to decide it, it's not just that you touches someone else by accident and here it comes, a wave of pain. Liam doesn’t remember to have decided it, actually he remembers that all he wanted when he touched Theo was to inflict him pain, or at least an humiliating defeat, certainly not to take a pain that he didn't even know existed in the first place. Secondly, and this was Mason who taught him, it's not enough to decide it, you also need to _want_ it.

Theo is crazy, now it's clear, and Liam spent the night awake so the lack of sense of the situation is not so strange. And since Liam has nothing better to do, he decides to investigate and he leans back on Theo, taking his wrist again, and again the pain comes. It spreads slowly but steadily from the tip of his fingers to the forearm and it gets faster and faster towards the chest, accompanied by a strange sense of anxiety, and eventually by a pair of fangs puncturing Liam's nose and cheek.

 

*

 

"I can’t believe it, you damn bastard, I knew I wasn’t supposed to get you into my house, I should have let you underground, damn-" Liam grip his bloody face and continues to bark without even looking at him, going back and forth across the room in pain. Theo would find it funny, if he hadn’t the image of his sister that rips his heart still on his eyes and if the beating in his chest wasn’t so much faster than normal. "You bite me, I can’t believe it, what are you, a do-"

"Next time you attack me in my sleep I’ll _eat_ your nose, you little brat."

"I attacked you? _I_ wasn’t attacking you, _you_ were punching me! "

A part of Theo, the one that remembers the exact second in which Liam's face replaced  Tara’s face and his warm hand calmly put on his arm, knows that Liam is right and that he was not, in fact, attacking him. Except that Liam then finishes the sentence and he’s no longer right, because before biting his face, Theo wasn’t attacking him either.

"I was punching you." He repeat blank, rising an eyebrow.

"Yes, and you were loosing. Bad." Liam seems convinced and vaguely proud. Theo's lips bend in a skeptical smile.

"Oh, really? I was loosing badly to you? "

"Exactly".

"In your dreams, Liam."

"No, in your dreams. I don’t dream about you. Especially when I don’t sleep, like this night. You could have told me you don’t know how to sleep without making so much noise, I would have put you in the basement or something. Ouch, fuck." Liam curls his nose in a grimace, blood-stained skin but intact.

"Stop being a drama queen, it already healed."

"It's five in the morning and a chimera has just tried to unplug my nose from my face. I have the right to be a drama queen, thanks. "

Theo, who has a name, Theo precisely, and not _'a chimera'_ , narrows his eyes.

"You also have the right to not wake me up. What the hell were you doing by the way? "

"I was trying to make you stop moving. The question is what _you_ where doing. As I touched you I was overwhelmed by a wave of pain. "

"It's usually what happens when a werewolf bites your face."

"No, I mean before that. When you were asleep, I absorbed your pain. "

Theo widens his eyes, taken aback.

"Don’t be ridicoulous."

"I swear-"

"You're delusional, leave me alone."

Liam is not delusional of course, because Theo's nightmares are never just nightmares and even though he didn’t know it, he’s not really surprised by the fact that he also phisically perceives the pain, so he gives his back to the youngest boy and returns to his mattress, hoping Liam isn't listening to his heart.

 _You can’t take pain if you don’t care_. Mason's voice suddenly echoes in Theo’s head, as he throws the blanket on himself. _If you don’t care._

 

 *

 

Liam glances at Theo, on the other side of the room. He doesn’t move like a crazy caiman anymore and he looks calm. There is the shadow of a smile on his lips now.

Sure as hell he’s dreaming something evil like actually eating his nose, the asshole. Tomorrow he will ask him to return him his socks.

 

 


	3. Accident (not so bad)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So you plan in advance to stay there staring at me sleep. Okay, Liam, not creepy at all.”

 

“I haven’t slept at all and it’s all your fault, my head is exploding, I hate you so muc-”

Liam keeps darting from one side of the room to the other with an open bag in his hands and he’s not looking at him, not at all, but Theo knows he’s the one he’s mad at. He remembers he’s supposed to answer back just after awhile, too busy enjoying the peace of his awakening: he literally woke up to Liam insulting him, but it’s the first time in months he opens his eyes without the sound of his own screams.

“Next time you’ll learn to keep your hand in place instead of touching me when I sleep.”  
Liam freezes in the act of throwing a book in his bag.

“Next time? You intend to occupy my room for much longer?”

“It’s just an idiom, idiot.” Theo gets up with a bored expression, pushing in a corner of his mind the thought that his next awakening will be accompanied by the irritating knocking of officers on his windows car once again. “It’s not like I love being molested by you.”

“Good, because I don’t want to...” Liam gasps and Theo can see the wheels rolling in his head. “To take your pain as you dream of beating people up. You know what, the next time you’ll agonize in your sleep I’ll do exactly what you’d do in my place, _a damn thing_. I’ll just stay there watching and not moving a finger, because it’s what you deserve.”

“So you plan in advance to stay there staring at me sleep. Okay, Liam, not creepy at all.”

Liam replies something indignant and Theo tries to listen to him and not focus on the fact that he said _the next time_. It’s just an idiom anyway.

 

*

 

“I’m ready.”

  
Theo stops tying his shoes and raises his eyes on Liam, perfectly clothed and standing in the middle of the room.

“Congrats...?”

Liam rolls his eyes.

“I mean, I’m ready, let’s go.”

  
“Where?”

“To school?”

Theo shrugs. “Then go.”

Liam looks confused now.  
“You don’t come?”

“Of course I come.”  
Liam stares expectant. “So?”

“So what?”

“Are we going or not?”

“Yes, now you go and then I go, so _we_ go, that’s how it works when two people do the same thing at the same time.”

Theo finishes tying his shoe and when he stands up he finds Liam still there staring at him. He sighs. “How do you go to school when I’m not here? Who do you ask permission to?”

“When you’re not here I walk obviously.”

“And when I’m here you walk as well.” Theo grabs his jacket and his keys and reaches for the door, throwing a final glance to Liam. “Obviously.”

 

*

 

Everyone has his merits, at least two or three usually, while someone just has one merit, singular, and this is Theo’s case, whose only vaguely positive quality has always been his sense of humour – and the fact that sometimes he disappears underground. Except that he wasn’t joking and he actually stops Liam from entering his car, just to surpass him and flipping him off from the window.

His blue track disappears on the horizon and even if Liam can’t see them, he _knows_ he’s still wearing his socks and this makes the situation so much more unacceptable.

 

*

 

“Give them back.”

Launch break is everyone’s favourite moment at school, everyone’s except Theo’s, who stays alone at his table without anyone to talk to or anything to eat, because life is just that great for him. Except Liam just crossed the room and has appeared at his table, breaking his solitary routine.

“Excuse me?”  
“My socks, give them back.”

Theo raises his brows.

“You need them now?”

“I need to know they’re not serving evil feet.”

It’s not the first time someone discredits Theo’s sense of morality, but it’s the first time his feet get accused as well and his brows raises even more.

“I won’t take off my socks at school, Liam.”

“Fine, but as soon as you’re home I want them back.”

Liam turns his back to him and Theo stays still, too taken aback to reply. Liam said _home_ , as in an actual house, with walls and doors and a roof, as in Liam’s home and not Theo’s car. And Liam knows that all Theo has is a car and he still said _home_ and Theo doesn’t understand – Theo, actually, fears he understood wrong.

A paper bag suddenly hits his chest, distracting him from his thoughts.

“You forgot lunch by the way.”

Liam goes back to Mason and Corey at the other side of the room and Theo, who never had a lunch to forget since he came back, stares at the bag for a ridiculous amount of time before actually opening it.

 

*

 

“Hey idiot, you want a ride?

Liam winces surprised, meeting Theo’s eyes beyond the lowered window of his truck. He immediately tries to find an answer to put him back in his place, but the car behind him rings the horn and Liam hurries on the truck. He’s still mad at Theo, even if he doesn’t exactly remember why –as if he needed a particular reason anyway, when ‘angry’ is how everyone should be in regards of the chimera- but when from the radio come the notes of Imagine, he doesn’t care anymore that he’s not in the car with Mason or Scott or someone who didn’t steal his socks and proceeded to leave him on foot, what matters is that Liam finds himself swinging and singing passionately, as every person with a heart should do when Imagine plays.

Theo is not part of the category of course and he keeps throwing him perplexed glances.

“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only ooone” Liam smiles and sings looking from the road to Theo and then the road again and he’s too into the song to notice that Theo is not doing the same. “I hope someday you’ll join us...” He just stares at Liam with a lost expression on his face and he’s not looking at the road at all, hands lifeless on the wheel. “And the world will live as oooon--”

If there’s something Liam hates when he’s estranged from reality and lost in music is flying violently against the windscreen of the car and break through it, landing face first on the hard asphalt.

 

*

 

“I can’t believe it, you don’t know how to sleep, you don’t know how to drive, what _can_ you do? How it’s possible that your evil plans actually worked last year? How could you do that if you can’t even survive the most basic functions of human bein--”

“Oh my god, can you stop talking?”

“I’m extracting pieces of windscreen from my _flesh_ , Theo, so no, I can’t stop talking or else I’ll start screaming.”

“You seems convinced it wouldn’t be a progress for my ears.”

 

*

 

“Look, your truck is destroyed, you can’t sleep on the road. Let’s go home, but I want my socks back, do you understand me?”

 

 


	4. More Accidents (very bad, forever sorry)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bad things happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize in advance for this chapter. There was a reason, I’m not that evil.

“Chamomile before bed? What are you, three years old?”

Theo glances at Liam entering the room with his hot cup and immediately a smirk curls his lips: his truck is destroyed, but Liam just gave him the pretext to mock him for the rest of the evening and this somehow makes it better.

“It’s not for me” Liam looks at him surprised, getting closer. “It’s for you, idiot.”

“Excuse me?” Theo stares incredulous at the cup Liam just placed on the desk in front of him and then he shoves it away. “What did you smoke Liam? I don’t need chamomile before bed.”

“You do” Liam insists. “And mostly _I_ need you to drink it: I don’t intend to spend another sleepless night because you don’t stop moving.”

“Forget about it.”

“Oh come on, drink it, what’s the problem? It’s good, I put sugar in it.”

“You put--” Theo stares at the yellow liquid in the cup, before shaking his head. “This is _so_ ridiculous. You drink it.”

Liam stares at him impatient for a little longer, then he grabs the cup determinate. Theo moves his chair back and brings a hand in front of his mouth, ready to defend himself, but Liam just brings the cup to his own lips and takes a long sip.

“There” He says with his lips still wet, handing the cup to him. “Now you.”

Theo looks from him to the cup, taken aback. It’s ridiculous and a cup of chamomile won’t stop his sister to visit him in his sleep like every single night, but it’s not like chamomile is this terrible thing to drink. Reluctant, he takes it from Liam’s hand, almost brushing his fingers in doing so.

“Will you stop bothering me with this socks thing if I drink this?”

“There’s no socks _thing_ , there are my socks and there is the fact that you stole them” Liam immediately specifies resentful. “But yes, if you drink the chamomile and let me sleep tonight, I’ll stop asking. I already told my mom to buy you new ones anyway.”

“I don’t want new socks.”

Theo says it without even thinking, but it’s actually true.

“Well, you should, since you don’t own any.”

“I like yours.” Liam looks at him surprised and Theo shrugs. “They’re warm.”

“I’ll tell her to buy you wool socks.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.” Theo lays the cup on the desk and crosses his arms, stubborn. “ _You_ buy new socks if you want them.”

Liam stares at the cup and then at Theo, before sighing annoyed. “Fine, you keep using my socks. But now drink.”

Liam doesn’t move his eyes from him and Theo hides a smile inside the cup.

 

*

 

Liam takes more time than normal to bring back the empty cup to the kitchen and when he comes back Theo sees why.

“What the hell is that?”

Liam not only doesn’t answer, but he brings the _thing_ he keeps in his arms closer and closer, until he’s trying to give it to him.

“Hey, stop, what the hell are you doing?” Theo darts on his feet, backing away. “Keep it away from me.”

“It’s a cat, Theo. A _kitten_. White.” The ball of fluff in Liam’s arms meows satisfied as to confirm it.

“Thanks, Liam, I still have eyes. My point is, what the hell are you doing with that cat?”

“I’m giving it to you” Liam replies simply, trying once again to place the thing in Theo’s arms. Failing big time.

“ _Why?”_

“Because it’s a kitten and everyone loves kittens, so stop pretending you don’t want to hug him and take it: I read on Wikipedia that keeping an animal close can help sleeping peacefully and letting the ones that share the room with you sleep as well.”

Theo gasps without emitting sound and he doesn’t know if it’s more the fact that Liam is quoting Wikipedia that leaves him speechless or the fact that he actually took his phone, opened google and typed nonsense just to help Theo sleep well.

“Where did you get that cat?”

“From the neighbours. Their cat made many, they won’t notice one is missing. I’ll bring him back tomorrow morning.” Liam walks around the mattress and hands the fluff ball to Theo once again. “Come on, take it and stop panicking, you’re ruining my plan.”  
“Your plan is stupid and I won’t touch that thing.”  
“Theo, it’s a kitten, we won’t pretend you don’t like kittens, okay? It’s something I’m not willing to pretend.”

“You don’t have to pretend, I actually don’t like cats.”

Liam stares him long, silently, before nodding.

“Fine, I’ll pretend you don’t like them then, as you wish. Lie down, come on. I’ll put it next to you and then I’ll give you my back and we’ll go to sleep and you’ll be able to hug him without me seeing, okay? Okay.”

Theo is not okay with this part of the plan, or with any part of the plan in general, but Liam grabs his arm and shoves him on his mattress, before putting the kitten next to him. Theo turns on the other way and the light goes off after awhile.

“Now think about nice and relaxing things, like the sound of the rain or the water flowing in a torrent or--”

“My sister drowned in a torrent, Liam. And stop quoting Wikipedia, if I wanted to know what Wikipedia has to say about the way I sleep, I’ll search it on, guess what, Wikipedia.”

“Imagine you’re skating then. Or playing videogames for hours.”

Theo turns towards him perplexed, finding that Liam is on his bed with his back towards him, as promised. “What?”

“Or whatever relaxing thing you like to do, I mean.”

  
“How do you--”

“I guessed, Theo, it’s not like I ever spied on you or something. Now hug the cat, possibly in silence this time.”

 

*

 

When Theo’s heartbeat slows and his breathing gets deeper, Liam slowly moves on his back, glancing at him: he _is_ hugging the kitten, he knew it. Everyone loves kittens.

  
*

 

 

“Oh god.”

It’s Liam’s voice.

  
“What?”

Theo opens his eyes confused, just to find out it’s still night.

“Oh my god.”

Liam is staring at him from above, pale, and Theo has a quick flash of what he was dreaming until a few seconds before, which is what he dreams every single night. Liam’s plan didn’t work, how surprising.

“What are yo-”

He tries to sit and it’s in that moment that he realizes he has something attached to his hand. To his claws actually. Sometimes they just get out when he’s having nightmares.

“Oh my god.”

Liam repeats it for the third time and Theo knows it even before lowering his eyes on his bloody hand. He swallows, retracting his claws. _Shit._

“I told you I don’t like cats.”

 

*

 

Liam is crying.

A part of Theo wants to mock him for it, but not his stomach, who’s crumpling up on himself in a very weird way. He killed the cat, okay, but to be honest Theo never understood this obsession of people for kittens, when dogs are so much cuter. And he didn’t do it on purpose, he was sleeping and it was an involuntary reflex, so he’s not going to feel guilty about it when he’s still working on the killing humans guilt. He’d like to inform Liam of this, but he keeps crossing the room back and forth with his hands in his hair and his eyes clearly wet and Theo’s stomach does the weird thing again.

“I didn’t mean to--” He says, but Liam is not listening.

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!”

“Liam, stop!”

“You killed the cat!”

“I didn’t mean to!”

“I KNOW!”

“Why are you screaming then!”

“I DON’T KNOW!”

Liam gives him his back, his hands again in his hair and his heart beating like crazy in Theo’s ears.  
“Are you crying?” He asks panicking.

“I’m not crying!” Liam shouts back with his voice broken.

“Oh god, you’re crying.”

Theo starts looking around agitated, not knowing what to do. He never had problems in  looking people crying, actually someone’s crying has always been a good sign for his evil plans, but this time he feels like running out of the room. He doesn’t want to see Liam crying. He didn’t mean to.

“Can you stop please?”

Maybe it’s not the best thing to say to someone who’s crying, but he asked nicely. Still, Liam turns towards him, his eyes red, and his fist right on Theo’s face.

“Fuck!” Theo brings his hands to his nose and now his eyes are wet too. “I said please!”

Liam gives him his back again, massaging his knuckles.

“It’s my fault” He whispers feeble.

It’s true, Theo agrees lighting up, it’s actually Liam’s fault. He kidnapped the cat and put it in his bed. For a second he prepares to agree aloud, relieved he doesn’t have to add the umpteenth terrible action to the list of things half Beacon Hills blames on him, but then he freezes.

“It’s my fault” Liam insists desperate and Theo’s stomach does the thing again.

“It’s the neighbours’ fault” He says immediately. “They shouldn’t have left the door open.”

“I broke in.” Liam sounds more and more desperate.

“They should have woke up and called the police. It’s all their fault, let’s go teach them a lesson.”

Theo moves towards the door, but Liam stops him.

“We kidnapped and killed their cat, Theo, we won’t go and give them a lesson.” 

He still looks miserable and Theo’s panic gets deeper.

“They have others” He remembers suddenly. “I can bring you another kitten.”

Liam stops him again.

“No, you won’t do anything. We’re both horrible people and we’re going to hell and now we’ll go back to sleep and we’ll keep living the rest of our miserable lives knowing we’re the most horrible out of all the horrible people in History.”

“I said I didn’t mean it.”

“I know. You were horrible already.”

There’s not the usual energy in Liam’s words as he brushes his eyes tiredly walking back to his bed.

Theo goes back to his mattress as well, sitting down and trying to think what Scott would say if he was there. He can’t obviously because of the millions reason why Theo is not Scott, so he stops trying.

 

*

 

Half an hour later Liam is still staring at the ceiling.

He could sleep, because Theo is not moving around as always – probably because he’s not sleeping, he was checking his phone until some minutes before, but a cat just died on the hands of a werewolf and it was all Liam’s fault and sleep doesn’t seem like the proper reaction to it. He doesn’t deserve sleep ever again. He’ll just be awake all his life waiting to die and then he’ll go to Hell and he won’t sleep there either.

“Wikipedia says the percentage of death among kittens so young is incredibly high.” Theo says suddenly. “Just one in ten survives. So he would have probably died anyway.”

“You’re making this up.”

“I’m not.” Liam doesn’t even need to listen to his heartbeat.

 

 *

 

“I’m sorry.”

It’s been almost two hours now and they’re still both awake when Theo’s voice breaks the silence. Liam frowns confused.

“What?”

  
“I’m sorry.”

“You said you didn’t mean it.”

Theo doesn’t answer, but he wasn’t referring only to the cat.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lied, I am that evil, I KILLED THE CAT I’M SORRY. This is how it went, my friend prompted me “Thiam with a cat” and she expected something fluff and soft so I HAD to do it because I imagined her face if I did this and I don’t regret it, her reaction was worth it and she still hasn’t forgave me (even after I wrote her an alternative ending where the cat lives and they all cuddle can you believe it). I apologize, I love cats and I promise this is the worst thing that will ever happen in this story and if you’d like me to continue translate it then we can all pretend it never happened.


	5. Jealousy (but we don't call it that)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hayden doesn’t understand what Theo is doing at Liam’s place.  
> Neither does Liam.

 

“Are you ready?”

When Theo snorts for the second time, making his car keys jingle and glaring impatient at him, Liam finally gets that he’s offering him a lift to school. The morning after the murder of a cat Theo will be kind, he mentally takes note. The drive is mostly silent. Liam tries to turn on the radio a few times, but every time Theo turns it off, probably because of what happened to his car the last time. Liam would like to ask him where he found the money to get it fixed so quickly, and if there was threatening involved, but his phone keeps vibrating, distracting him. Mason is dying from the need to tell him something, it’s clear, but at the same time, being Mason, well, Mason, he’s not able to just tell him, without all the “guess”, “you’ll never guess”, “I know something you don’t know” and so on for others twenty notifications. Liam finds it so annoying, he doesn’t like when people shilly-shally.

 

 *

 

Theo is bothered.

Liam keeps checking his phone and he doesn’t pay the little bit of attention to him.

After school he’ll leave him on foot, he decrees silently.

 

* 

 

Liam sees Mason as soon as he sets foot in the school parking and immediately starts walking towards him to finally find out the mysterious news that has already cost him thirty Whatsapp notifications, except that said news appears out of nowhere and stands before him with a little smile on her lips.

“Hey, Liam” Hayden says, a vein of uncertainty in her voice.

Liam widens his eyes completely taken aback, while Mason, several feet away, starts making large movements with his arms towards the girl, as if Liam didn’t have her right in front of his eyes and wasn’t able to see from himself now: Hayden is back. Thank you very much Mason.

Point is, Liam, and he’ll never admit it aloud, literally cried, with big fat tears and everything, when Hayden left him before leaving town as well. He _cried_ a whole night, because Hayden was his first real crush, probably his first love, and the first weeks without her have been a living hell, literally. He got used to always have her around and with all the drama of his sixteen years he thought he couldn’t survive without her, except that he did and at one point it stopped being weird: as quickly as he had gotten used to her hair, her scent and her lips, he then got used to her absence, without never deciding to do so.

So now that he has her right in front of him without any warning, _thank you Mason, again,_ Liam has no idea of what he’s supposed to feel. He doesn’t know if that’s how it works, if he _has to_ know what to feel in order to feel it, or if it should be something natural. Hayden wasn’t just his first crush, she’s also his first ex and Liam has no idea how all of this works, he just knows that with her face so close he’s too confused to feel something, anything at all.

Hayden, instead, seems literally boiling with emotions, especially anger, and those are her werejaguar teeth, right there, in the school parking, and those are golden eyes filled with hate and fixed on...

“No, Hayden, wait!”

Liam throws himself between them just in time, taking her away from the boy behind him.

Theo stands there next to his truck, still, keys in his hand and a challenging smirk on his lips, eyes on Hayden.  
“Glad to see you too” He says with a grin that causes an immediate growling response from the girl.

Liam has to fight with a little more strength to hold her and it’s just when Mason runs towards them and joins him in reminding her that they are surrounded by students that Hayden retreats her fangs, but not the homicidal spark in her eyes.

Liam swallows, wondering if every reunion between exes is like that.

“What the hell is _he_ doing here?”

This is a question Liam too often asked himself and the fact that his ex-girlfriend suddenly came back from another state to ask him it as well doesn’t help him find an answer. What the hell is Theo doing there? With them? There’s no immediate and logical answer, Theo is there and that’s enough.

“It’s a long story” he says quickly, because Theo looks amused and Liam somehow knows that whatever he’d find funny to reply, Hayden wouldn’t. “Why don’t we sit on that bench, me and you _and Mason_ , and talk about it?”

He emphasizes _and Mason,_ glancing eloquently at Theo, just to let him know that his presence is not required for that conversation. It’s not that he’s scared of Hayden, well, yes, maybe a little of her too, but what really Liam doesn’t want to find out is what Theo would do if she actually attacked him.

Theo presses his lips in a fake little smile, because he’s such an asshole and sure as hell he wanted to stay and have fun, and shrugs. “Okay, I’ll go to class then. See you later.” Hayden has so many questions written on her face, but she seems to hold them all until Theo adds, staring her right in the eyes: “I’ll wait for you in the truck, Liam.”

He’s an asshole and he did it on purpose and Liam is going to break his nose so many tim-- “He’ll wait for you?!”

“Well, yes, he’s going to give me a lift home because...”

“Because we live together” Theo concludes for him, aloud, already a few meters from them. Damned supernatural hearing. Liam doesn’t really feel like looking at Hayden right now.

“It’s a long story” He repeats, even if Theo just spoiled the finale and Liam hopes Mason will know what to say to give a sense to everything, because Liam’s long story is mostly composed by what Hayden already knows, Theo coming back to town and doing every horrible thing one could imagine to every pack’s member, and Hayden already knows the part where Liam pulls Theo out of the ground as well, and in all of that there isn’t a rational passage that takes logically to “now we live together”, except that the ending is exactly that.

 

 

Mason wasn’t able to explain it better than him, because Mason wasn’t even able to warn him in time that Hayden was back, so why Liam still trusts his best friend is a mystery. Hayden went to class still confused and not happy at all about the _Theo still breathing and living with you_ thing, and Liam went to lesson dazed as well. More confused by Hayden’s return actually. Theo living with him is crazy and it doesn’t make sense of course, Liam doesn’t even try to rationalize it, but it’s also something normal and weirdly right. It doesn’t make sense, but in a twisted bizarre way that Liam can’t put in words it does. There isn’t a real reason why Theo should live with him and not, for example, in the animal clinic or on the side of the street, except that there is actually. _He’s my responsibility._

 

***

 

Mason is not there this time, it’s just him and Hayden in the school garden, among the groups of students chatting and walking towards the exit. There aren’t fangs or homicidal glares now. Hayden seems sullenly and curious, she looks again like the girl he fell in love with.

“So, apart from Theo...” Hayden clears his voice and glances at him uncertain. _Apart from Theo._

Liam just now remembers that _apart from Theo_ exists _._ They exists and Hayden came back and this should mean something _apart from Theo._

Hayden probably expects that he thought about it, because he actually had the whole morning to do it. What Hayden surely doesn’t expect is that Liam spent the previous hours thinking about the exact opposite of ‘apart from Theo’ and so there he is, at the same point, with her in front of him and the emptiness inside.

“So...” Liam doesn’t know what to say, he doesn’t feel like he has something to say at all, but the impatient sound of a horn saves him the embarrassment.

“Will you move? I’ll leave you on foot, I swear!”

Hayden rolls her eyes and Liam forces himself to do it as well, even if he’s relieved: he’ll think about what he feels for Hayden at home, with calm and time, and as soon as he’ll figured he’ll let her known. Perfect plan right there.

“I have to go, we’ll talk about this again, okay? Tomorrow or later today...” The horn sounds again. “Later.”

 

 *

 

Liam no longer stares at his phone every two seconds and he actually speaks to him.

It’s Theo the one who gives him little attention now and is quieter than usual.

He doesn’t like Hayden.

Theo doesn’t like a lot of people, to be honest, he doesn’t actually like Mason, or Corey, or Scott or basically anyone, but Hayden in particular awakes in him an instinctive motion of repulsion and he knows perfectly why.

When the ground opened above him and allowed him to emerge after months of hell, the first thing he saw was Liam's face. Liam pulled him out and since then he instinctively associates his face with breathing and freedom.

Hayden's face was the second one he saw and he saw it only when he moved his eyes on her, right after hearing her "Send him back, Liam". It was only then that Theo lowered his eyes to the sword still gripped in Liam's hands, only then, hearing Hayden's voice, he felt his sister's fingers tickling his chest at the height of his heart. She repeated it several times during those hours, just send him back, but the first was all it took for Theo to associate Hayden with fear.

And that's what he feels watching her talk to Liam, alone, several meters from her car.

Even if the sword is now destroyed, the most visceral part of Theo still associates Hayden's face with a silent fear, even if he’s not sure of what.

 

***

 

Theo doesn’t usually open the door at Liam’s house, but when he finds Hayden in front of him, he’s happy he did it. Jenna is out and Liam is in the shower and that’s the only reason Theo felt comfortable opening the door, but as he sees Hayden’s surprised and unhappy expression, a little smirk immediately appears on his lips.

“Yes?”

“Where is Liam?”

“Can I help you?” Theo continues as if he didn’t hear her.

“Where. Is. Liam.” Hayden speaks slowly, a murderous look in her eyes.

“Oh, Liam, sure. Do you want me to give him a message from you?”  
Theo can hear her heartbeat rising faster and faster and his smile getting wider, because that always make them angrier.

“What I want, Theo, is for you to move from the door.”  
“I see, I fear I can’t do that. It’s not safe to let strangers in the house nowadays.”

Theo has been waiting for this since he saw her that morning and this is the moment. Hayden doesn’t growl any warning, her eyes just glow yellow and her fangs are out in a second, but Theo is ready. He extends his claws just as quickly while his face changes and a loud growl thunders in the house, immediately followed by Hayden’s. They face each other completely shifted now.

Theo killed Josh and Tracey to take their powers, Hayden is alive only because she didn’t have any ability Theo needed, but he never liked unfinished jobs and now he’s just waiting for her to attack first. And attacking seems to be exactly what she intends to do, when Liam’s fast footsteps and voice distract them both.

“Theo? What’s going on? I heard... _oh.”_

 

*

 

Liam is dripping all over the floor, just a towel on his hips and his hair still wet, and his mother is going to kill him.

Liam heard Theo’s growl from downstairs, followed by the growl of another wolf, so not wetting the floor wasn’t his first worry as he ran towards the stairs. He doesn’t like Theo, he still finds him annoying and inconvenient most of the time, but it’s became such an instinctive reaction running at his side during a fight. Habit, clearly.

The point is, it wasn’t _another wolf’s_ growl, just now Liam sees it. It was Hayden and he didn’t recognized her. He recognized Theo with no hesitation, but he had to come face to face with her to recognize his ex girlfriend. Again, habit, clearly.

“It’s Hayden” Theo says, his face suddenly human again, no fangs in sight and a too kind smile on his lips. “She’s till in town, weird right? I heard there was a shooting at the mall today, I thought she changed state already.” Hayden, still shifted, growls and Theo turns towards her, that little smile still on his face. “To protect your sister, obviously.”

Theo walks away satisfied, glancing amused at Liam before stepping on the stairs. Behind him Hayden is human again and her expression is indecipherable.

“Better kill your own sister, am I right?”

Liam widens his eyes, hoping he heard wrong. She didn’t say it.

Theo’s footsteps behind him stop suddenly. She said it.

 

 *

 

Almost every night Tara rips his heart from his chest. When she’s not, Theo is the one doing it to her.

As in, Theo doesn’t need someone to remind him what he did to his sister because he remembers it pretty well. Especially, Theo doesn’t need _Hayden_ to remind him.

What Theo needs now is to kill. Especially, kill Hayden.

With a growl he jumps from the stairs and fuck everything, Scott, the pack, Beacon Hills and Liam, especially Liam who just closed the door in front of Hayden, smearing himself on it, placing himself between Theo and his target.

“Move” Theo growls trying to push him away as Liam stays still, a hand firmly gripped on the door and the other shoving Theo back.

“Wait, Theo, stop. Listen, I need your help.”

“Move.”

“Seriously, it’s important. You have to...you have to go to our room and turn the TV on. Bake off starts now and I need you to watch it and tell me what happens and who gets eliminated, okay? Because I can’t watch it now and so I really need you to do it for me. Please.”

 

 *

 

Liam is aware he’s a terrible actor with terrible lines, because what he just said doesn’t make sense and he’s not even sure Bake off is actually on, because Liam never watched Bake off in his life, but Theo’s heartbeat is progressively slowing down as something similar to confusion takes the place of anger in his blue eyes.

“Okay?” Liam insists cautious, pointing at the stairs with his chin.

Theo stares at him silently for some more seconds, then he turns around and goes upstairs.

 

 *

 

Hayden is still outside and she seems vaguely indignant. Probably it’s what happens when you slammed the door in someone’s face.

“Liam, you can’t live with him, did you see what...”

“You provoked him.”

“ _He_ provoked me.”

“Yes, it’s true” Liam admits because provoking people is what Theo does all the time, literally, all the time, so of course he provoked her. “But what he said is not anywhere near what...”

“What he _did_ is not comparable, Liam, did you forget? What he did to me, to Scott, to _you_.”

Hayden is talking lowly but so vehemently that it’s like she’s screaming. She’s not saying anything false or unreasonable, but Liam still feels a bit of exasperation. He doesn’t feel like running through what Theo did, it’s been awhile since he cared actually, maybe since when he saved his life at the hospital, or maybe when he saved him again, in that same elevator, or since when he saved him from his anger, stopping him from killing Nolan and then Gabe, Liam really doesn’t have a clue, he can’t find an exact moment when all the horrible things Theo did faded into the background, maybe that moment doesn’t even exist, there is just the present moment, where Hayden keeps talking reminding him who Theo is and what he did, and Liam who tries but still doesn’t care. It’s Theo, he’s annoying and unnerving and now he’s in his bedroom watching bake off and this is how things are, very simply.

“Look, just try to stay away from him, okay?” Liam concludes tired. He’s wearing only a towel, it’s cold and he just wants to get back inside. “So he can’t provoke you and you won’t say...other stuff to him.”

“I think it’s a wonderful plan, Liam, but it’s a little hard to stay away from him when he literally lives with you.”

“It shouldn’t be hard.”

Liam says it low, with just a thread of voice, but he looks Hayden straight in the eyes and she was never stupid.

“Oh” She says and she doesn’t look angry anymore, just surprised. “So, even without Theo...”

“Yes.” Liam nods and he didn’t planned to do this, he actually didn’t decide anything about it yet, but apparently now he’s doing it. “Even without Theo.”

“Okay” Hayden nods and they just stare at each other without talking for awhile, then she leaves and Liam remains alone on his alleyway, still wet and half naked. He doesn’t feel relieved, but neither sad. He keeps feeling what he felt since he saw her, absolutely nothing.

 

 *

 

“Those judges don’t understand shit, they eliminated the only one who could bake, who cares if the cake collapsed? They admitted it was good and...”

Theo keeps muttering all annoyed between his teeth, eyes glued on the screen, apparently very into the culinary show. Liam tries to tell him that there’s no need for him to watch it now that he’s back, but Theo almost bites his hand when he gets near the controller.

The worst part is when even the second episode ends and Theo finds out that he will have to wait a week for the one after and a whole month to see the winner of everything. This discover will be accompanied by a broken controller and just then Liam will realizes he accidentally created a monster.  

 

Before falling asleep, that night, Liam will text Mason on WA to update him on the latest news, as usually, and he’ll be too busy sending him pictures of Theo hypnotized by Bake off to remember mentioning he definitively broke up with Hayden.

 

 


	6. More Jealousy (we still don’t call it that)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s forbidden to do things on a Sunday and it’s because Liam broke this fundamental rule that he finds himself in that situation now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter I had translated already, so I'll stop popping out every single second on the tag now I swear lol But also, let me know if you'd like me to keep translating this or if it's better if I just write new things directly in English -I kinda like the result better than translations to be honest, because my style when I write in italian is so different and it doesn't work so well in English. But at the same time this was my first Thiam ever so I'm attached to it even if the first chapters are terrible.  
> About that btw, it's also because I wasn't supposed to publish this at the time, it was just a game with my friends and we prompted each other things and sent the chapters to each other only, so this is why there are things that doesn't make sense like Theo getting his truck fixed in a heartbeat ecc, from the tenth chapter I actually started to post the fic so everything is more connected from there.  
> So yeah, let me know what you think!

 

 

“I bet you can’t even skate.”

It’s 2 p.m. of a sleepy lazy Sunday, the sun entering from the window warms his legs inert on his unmade bed and raising his brow is the most laborious movement Theo made all day.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, I bet you can’t even skate” Liam repeats as if Theo didn’t have a supernatural hearing.

“Yes, I heard what you said. Do you plan to contextualize or...?”

Contextualize is something Liam forgets about doing most of the time. Simply, sometimes, as he’s absorbed in his own thoughts, he instinctively opens his mouth and let them out, just like now. 

“I was thinking--”

“Terrible idea.”

“I was thinking about when you told me and Scott how you became a werewolf.” At this point Theo shuts up and it’s only in part because of the pillow Liam threw on his face. “You said you were bitten one night when you stayed out late training with the skate and of course now we all know it was bullshit, that the Dread Doctors made you this way and everything. And I was thinking, I bet you can’t even skate.”

Theo doesn’t know why Liam was thinking exactly this, when it happened months and months before, when Theo was just arrived in town and was still digging his way into the pack with a lie after the other, but the truth is that Theo _can_ skate: it’s one of the basic rules for a good lie, always interlacing it with a bit of truth, even a crumb.

He smirks, sitting upright.

“You _bet_ you said?”

 

*

 

Liam did say _bet_ , okay, but what he meant was _bet_ as a way of saying and not as in _okay Theo drag me to Mason’s to ask him for his old skate and then at the park._ Misunderstandings are a thing, Liam understands that, really, and this is why he cleared it immediately, more or less ten times, but Theo keeps mistaking all his _oh my god Theo I don’t give a fuck, leave me alone_ for _oh yes, let’s go to the park, what a wonderful idea, show me how you skate._

And so they’re now at the park, on a Sunday afternoon, when everyone knows that it’s _forbidden_ to leave the house, wear something different from your pyjamas and in general do _things_ on a Sunday afternoon. Everyone except the crowd of kids and teens that swarms all around them, on the swings, the benches and on the skateboard. Liam us surprised, in all his sixteen years of life he always assumed that his typical Sunday was the typical Sunday of all humanity, and instead here it is, the youth of Beacon Hills, outside and under the sun. Why adults always complain about new generations then?

Liam thinks this and more, he tries to think about literally anything else that it’s not Theo’s satisfied smirk after he finished the umpteenth stunt and stopped right in front of him.

“Stop that.”

“What, being good at skating?”

Liam could swear he never saw Theo so fulfilled not even after their victory against Monore.

“Showing off.”

Theo, in the exact definition of showing off, jump from the skate and send him flying in his hand with a hit of his heel, before leaning on it. Liam tries to communicate him with his eyes that he’s not impressed at all, while a group of girl some feet away bursts in giggles too loud, communicating the exact opposite. Liam imagines that it makes sense, this all story of Theo impressing girls, because of his ability with the skate and his white shirt too tight on his chest, perfectly visible under the open zip of his hoodie. His jeans are so ripped it’s like he’s not even wearing them because the whole park can see his muscled legs anyway, and with this sun his eyes are particularly green, all the kind of details that impress girls, or at least Liam guesses. Those shoulders, big and defined, the golden reflexes between his soft hair, the perfect smile, yes, it’s probable that girls feel a heat at the height of their neck in front of all this. Not that Liam can know for certain of course, he can only guess.

“You’re not God just because you can skate, you know? I bet it’s super easy, I bet I can do it as well.”

 

*

 

Liam doesn’t even try to clear the misunderstanding this time, because he said _I bet_ two times in a row and so he deserves the bruise he feels painfully becoming larger and larger on his left cheek.

“I never saw anyone more incapable of you, I swear.” Theo helps him stand up for the umpteenth time and he does it laughing happily and without any kind of worry for Liam’s hurt cheek. The only reason he’s so fast to help him back on his feet actually it’s because he wants to put him back on the skate as soon as possible so he can enjoy in record time another fall, Liam got this the third time it happened, “You can’t even stand on it without mov--” Theo can’t even end the sentence before bursting into another annoying laugh and Liam inhales deeply, trying to keep his cool. It’s more habit than anything actually, he’s not really losing control, which is weird, because Theo has been laughing at him for ten minutes and this is exactly one of those situations in which his I.E.D. should emerge, but Theo _has been laughing for ten minutes_ and Liam is not really bothered.

He can’t skate, fine, it’s not a tragedy. He can do plenty of other things, like playing Lacrosse, while Theo is probably awful at Lacrosse or he wouldn’t have miss the occasion to enter the team and show off—

“Hi, could you teach me to skate too?”

Liam almost falls again even if he’s not on the skate right now, because despite his supernatural hearing he didn’t notice the separation that took place inside the group of girls: one of them, a blond girl taller than Liam of an entire foot, is now right in front of them.

Liam is sure Theo didn’t notice her as well, too busy deride him, but unlike Liam he doesn’t risk to fall and he’s immediately in full control of the situation, with his irritating smirk on his lips.

 

*

 

It’s forbidden to do things on a Sunday and it’s because Liam broke this fundamental rule that he finds himself in this situation now. He’d like to text Mason to complain about his miserable life, but he can’t because there are two girls on the bench with him, one at each side, and if Liam knows something about girls is that their eyes are fast and cunning, always ready to see the things in other people’s phones.

Sam and Marzia aren’t annoying actually and it’s not actually their fault if Liam is miserable right now, it’s all the situation that bothers him, the fact that it’s Sunday and he should be in his underwear and instead he’s there at the park doing nothing, wasting all the time he could waste at home, with two girls he doesn’t even know.

What actually bothers him tough is that Sarah, the blonde one, is better than him at skating.

There are a lot of factors that bother Liam about it: first of all, skating is a stupid sport and surely Sarah is terrible at Lacrosse, so she has nothing to laugh all happy about, as she clings on Theo to steady herself. Which is the second factor by the way: clinging on Theo, that’s clearly cheating. Liam didn’t held on Theo, not once, because even if he wanted to cheat –and he didn’t, because he has a moral, unlike this Sarah – he couldn’t have, because Theo, the bastard, always kept himself out of his reach because he clearly enjoys seeing Liam fail. Third factor, and this one bothers Liam particularly, Theo never _taught_ him how to skate, he just put him on it and then proceeded to mock him, while now he suddenly seems the perfect instructor, full of good advices and attention, and Liam would love to take the skate and break it on his nose. _What do they have to laugh so much about anyway?_

 

_*_

 

Sarah’s joke is not that funny, but Liam’s heartbeat keeps racing weirdly and Theo can’t stop smirking.

 

*

 

“You should drive me home, it’s late.”

The sun still shines in the sky and Liam answers with a challenging look to Sarah’s raise brow. What does she know what Liam has to do during his Sunday afternoons? He could work, for what she knows. He could study. He could save lives. He could have to watch seven season of Game of Thrones. Liam is on par with all his tv shows and he has nothing to do a home, nothing to be late for, but he’s still bothered by the fact Theo is making him be late.

“Soon, Liam.” Theo uses the same tone a mom would use with a capricious child that interrupts adult conversation and Liam feels the anger boiling in his chest.

“Fine” He says. “I’ll wait in the car.”

Liam always had troubles handling his sudden outbursts of anger, he also has a diagnosis that proves it, but lately he’s became pretty good at controlling himself, so when he tells Theo _I’ll wait in the car_ he absolutely doesn’t mean _I’ll tear off your steering wheel,_ which is exactly what happen.

 

*

 

“I can’t believe it.”

“It’s your fault for making me wait.”

“I bet you didn’t wait a second, you just walked straight to my car and...”

It’s what happened, Liam didn’t wait a second, he entered the car, he violently ripped of the wheel from the dashboard and then he felt better.

Theo takes another couple of minutes to come to terms with what happened to his car and half an hour later the tow truck is carrying it away.

“Hey Mason, listen...”

Liam explains the situations in great details to his best friend, concluding with the request of a lift home, and it’s just when he doesn’t get an answer that he realizes he’s been talking to none.

His phone died exactly after ‘listen’, but this he’ll find out just hours later.

“Well, maybe he heard and he’ll come get us anyway” He comments optimist, earning a glare from Theo.

Theo doesn’t feel optimist. Liam ripped of his steering wheel and now they’re both on feet and with their phones dead and there’s nothing to be optimist about. He grabs some coins from his pockets, annoyed.

“Let’s rent some bikes.”

 

*

 

Theo didn’t feel optimist and he was right, because there is no bike left, as if the entire Beacon Hills decided to throw a competition on two wheels.

_“No.”_

“We need to get back home somehow, Theo.”

“I’m not getting on that thing, forget about it.”

“There’s Bake off tonight on TV. You don’t want to miss the episode, do you?”

 

*

 

Theo’s knee keeps peeping out from the big rip on his jeans as he goes up and down and from such muscular legs you would expect some strong pedalling, but the truth is that Liam is doing all the work, which is why they’re moving as slow as a snail. Liam suspects if he just threw Theo on his shoulder and starts running they would get home faster.

The sun doesn’t shine anymore above them and it’s definitely late now, but for some reason all the annoyance and hurry he felt before are gone now. It’s Sunday, he’s on a tandem with Theo and it’s not like he has anything better to do.

 

 

 


	7. Who's the thief? (the thief is Theo)

 

The first time, Liam doesn’t even think it could be Theo.

It’s not the first time he loses his Lacrosse jersey, between the mess of his training bag, his bedroom and more in general his life, and when he comes back home, after being scolded by Coach, and he doesn’t find it under his bed or in the washing machine, but untied on Theo's chest, Liam is totally taken aback.

Oh, is that how it works then? Not only he steals him half of the space available in his room, but even his clothes now?

Theo protests weakly that it’s cold, that he already went to training so he doesn’t need it right now, that _bla bla bla_ and Liam couldn’t care less about any of that: he immediately gets back in possession of his hoodie, he throws one of the three Theo owns in his face and he orders him to never touch his again. It’s also a matter of principle, Theo is certainly bad at Lacrosse and so with what right he goes around wearing his _Captain_ hoodie? Liam has never stolen his professional skater hoodie, mostly because it doesn’t exist, okay, but even if it existed, Liam wouldn’t even _dream_ of touching it, because he, unlike Theo, is a person with consistency.

 

 

The second time, when he prepares his bag for training the morning after and doesn’t find his hoodie anywhere, he doesn’t hesitate: Theo, even if still awake, is already under the blankets and when Liam tears them away he can’t believe his eyes. He does it on purpose, there is no other explanation.

Theo doesn’t own a very well-stocked wardrobe, besides the underwear bought him by Liam’s mother, all his belongings are reduced to a few pair of jeans, some t-shirts and three hoodie, but this doesn’t justify the affront that is using Liam's jersey as his pyjamas. Liam waits for Theo to reluctantly take off his hoodie before breaking his nose with a well-balanced fist, careful not to stain it with blood. Then he folds it neatly on the bedside table and goes to sleep.

 

 

Liam opens his eyes shortly before the alarm rings, annoyed by a sunbeam fixed right on his face, and the first thing he notices is that his hoodie is no longer on the bedside table.

He won’t just break his nose this time, because he has trainings in less than a hour and the situation has became simply unacceptable. He will start with his nose of course, but then he will move to the eyebrow and then the lip and a black eye is certainly adequate, why not, Liam has not yet decided in detail how long the beating will last, but as he walks determinate towards the mattress on the ground he knows that it needs to be painful enough for Theo to remember it the next time he thinks about stealing from him.

Theo is still asleep and the blankets don’t cover entirely the scarlet fabric of Liam's Lacrosse jersey. The zip slides down in a clean gesture and immediately Liam gently moves Theo’s sleeping body to one side, as he removes his arms from the hoodie. He performs the whole operation slowly and with extreme gentleness, careful not to wake him, because Liam feels particularly bitter that morning and he has decided to start the beating while Theo is still asleep.

His jersey finally disappears safely inside his Lacrosse bag and at this point Liam returns to tower over the sleeping boy under him, ready for his revenge. Theo continues to sleep deeply because fuck werewolf’s senses apparently, expression relaxed and soft, and his chest, now covered only by a thin white T-shirt, moves slowly up and down following his breathing. His right hand is inert on the pillow next to his head exactly where Liam left it after moving him, palm facing up and fingers half-closed in a peaceful pose. The black eyelashes brushes his cheeks, motionless, and it’s clear that Theo is not beating up anyone in his sleep now. Judging by his peaceful expression he’s probably dreaming of something beautiful, completely unaware of what’s coming for him.

Liam stares at him for a long time, hands clenched in fists along his sides.

 

 

When Theo wakes up, half an hour later, alone in the bedroom and late for school, he finds out he’s no longer wearing Liam's jersey. He has another, however, over the white t-shirt, one of his, poorly tied up. 

 

**

 

Theo spends the afternoon alone, since Liam is not home and it’s not like Mason, Corey or anyone else in Beacon Hills speak to him.

At half past six, Theo finds himself glancing impatiently at the clock, because Liam didn’t even said where he was going after school.

Maybe he’s out with Mason or some other friend, since Liam actually _has_ friends, and Theo is not one of them clearly. He’s a little annoyed by this, not that he expects to be invited or something, but ...

It’s not just the sound of the door opening that distracts him from his bitter thoughts as much as the soft fabric that hits him straight in the face. Particularly the zipper, now painfully printed in the middle of his forehead for who knows how long.

"Here, now stop stealing mine, okay?"

Liam stares at him crossed arms from the entrance of the room and Theo lowers his eyes on the hoodie that just flew to his face, confused.

"What is this?"

"It's a hoodie. Identical to mine, see? Equally warm and just as red. In fact, it's even redder, happy? Except that there is no Dunbar or Lacrosse written on it, and this one is all yours. "

Liam didn’t go out with his friends and Theo looks down, embarrassed, as he plays with the dark red laces. A part of him is about to say thank you, but all the other parts of him attack that part and what comes out of it is a shrug and an indecipherable verse.

Liam raises his eyebrows, but then he shrugs nonchalantly. The only thing that matters is that he put an end to the sequence of thefts.

 

**

 

"You’ve got to be kidding me."

This time Liam checked the content of his Lacrosse bag before going to bed just out of habit, assuming that his jersey would be in its place.

"Theo, tell me you’re not serious."

Theo is fucking serious and when Liam throws his blankets at the feet of his mattress, he finds him wearing the red jersey with his number and the white _Dunba_ r writing on his back.

Liam's indignation is so high that he doesn’t even know how to react to this and he finds himself gasping in disbelief for several seconds.

"I bought you a hoodie! Red! "In confirmation of his words, Liam grabs Theo’s new hoodie and throws it hard at him."Use this and give me mine back!"

Theo has such a guilty expression, a sign that he realizes how absurd the whole situation is, but he still has the nerve to snort all pissed off, while he reluctantly lowers his zip.

"Why do you make such a big deal of it?"

"A big deal?" Liam blurts out, immediately motivated to make the deal even bigger. "You use my hoodie to sleep just in spite!"

"Spite?" Theo snorts sceptically. "Oh come on, the world doesn’t revolve around you."

"But my hoodie does!"

"And take it back then!"

It’s only thanks to his ultra-developed reflexes that Liam, taken aback by Theo's sudden rage of anger, manages to grab the hoodie that he violently threw towards him. Then he stares at him while he pulls his covers back up to his snack with a snap and gives him his shoulders, all of it calibrating every gesture with the same degree of strength that he would need if he was trying to break his mattress.

Several seconds later, Liam is still standing in the middle of the room, with his hoodie in his hands and a lost expression on his face. This is so confusing. He’s sure he’s the one with the right to get angry and he missed the part where Theo is now the one seemingly infuriated.

"So?" He tries after a while, clearing his throat. "Don’t you wear it?"

Theo turns to look at him and follows his nod towards the new crumpled hoodie next to his pillow.

"I don’t want it" He decrees cold, before giving him his back again.

"Yes, you want it, you sleep with a hoodie every night," Liam insists.

"Not that."

"Oh, so you’re telling me that you need this exact hoodie to sleep?" Liam rolls his eyes, sceptical.

Theo turns again and stares at him with a challenge in his eyes. "Yes."

Liam is so close to punch that perfect nose of his. He can’t believe how childish, stubborn and unreasonable Theo is being, as well as ungrateful: that’s what he gets for buying the asshole his own hoodie.

"And why is that, enlighten me. You like to pretend you know how to play Lacrosse or ... "

"I don’t have nightmares."

Liam blinks in confusion, unsure of what he heard since Theo spoke so fast.

"What?"

"I don’t have nightmares when I sleep with your hoodie." Theo repeats, eyes glued to the mattress as if looking at Liam could kill him. "I think it's the scent." He clears his throat and Liam can perfectly hear the discomfort in his voice, just like his heartbeat accelerating. "Feeling your scent as I sleep, it reminds me that I'm here and not ... somewhere else."

 

 

 

There are several things that hits him all at the same time and they all have the effect of making Liam feel incredibly stupid: Theo has never dreamed of beating him up in his sleep, he has always been trapped in that place where Kira's sword sent him long ago, that place Liam himself pulled him from. And it’s always Liam, every night, to pull him out again and again, even if only through the trace of a scent stuck on a hoodie.

 _Anchor,_ a voice whispers somewhere inside his head, and Liam ignores it.

"Well, then take it back so we can all sleep, you pain in the ass. "

 

 **

 

Since that evening Liam's Lacrosse hoodie officially becomes Theo's pyjamas and Tara's nocturnal visits almost disappear. When the hoodie is in the washing machine, Theo always finds another one of Liam’s cloth ready on his pillow, without ever having to ask for it.

From that evening, as a side effect, Liam's Lacrosse trainings start smelling more and more like Theo.

 

 


	8. Queen (not really)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mason wonders why Liam can’t ask him by himself. Mason is not his owl.  
> (Mason asks him anyway, because he kinda is his owl).

 

“Why doesn’t she talk to you anymore?”

Liam was staring at his plate and not at the world around him, so he has to turns to is left, where Theo suddenly appearead, next to his table, and then at his right where the other boy’s is looking at, where Hayden is eating with her friends.

“We never talked to each other” He blurts out because sometimes when Liam doesn’t want to be honest he just says the first thing that come sto his mind, even when it doesn’t make sense, like now. Mason and Corey stares at him confused, and so does Theo. “I mean, what do you care?”

“I don’t care, why would I?” Theo shrugs, nonchalantly, his brown lunch bag still closed in his hand. “There’s no need to be grumpy.”

“You’re always grumpy.”

“Exactly, I’m the grumpy one” Theo has his usual _I know things that you humans_ tone, but Liam can’t help but notice how stupid he looks standing there with his lunch in his hands when everyone around him is already sitting and eating in company.

“Well, if you weren’t maybe you wouldn’t always be alone at lunch.”

That one on Mason’s face, just vaguely affected by his stuffed mouth, is undoubtedly his _oh no Liam why did you say it_ expression, a very familiar expression sadly, and Liam focuses confused on his best friend’s face so much that he almost forgets that Theo is still there, helped by his protracted silence.

Then Theo snaps and Liam stares at him taken aback.

“Well, maybe eating alone is exactly what I want, ever thought about that?” 

Liam never thought about that of course and even if he did it wouldn’t matter, because Theo already stormed away without looking back. He’s walking in that way he has of walking when he’s angry, as if every step was needed to prove something, wrapped in a patina of challenge and hurt pride. There is something absolutely ridiculous in that pace, Liam believes, and this time it’s even more ridiculous because of its short length, since the only free table is just a few feet from them.

Liam keeps staring at him sitting with fury and he doesn’t worry about being subtle: he bets Theo won’t look in his direction for at least the next twenty minutes. Predictable and ridiculous, that’s what he is.

When Theo opens his bag to grab his lunch, Liam moves his eyes away, suddenly not amused anymore.

“Mason, would you ask Theo if he wants to sit with us, please?”

Mason looks at him surprised. “What?”

“Would you ask T--”

“No, I mean, why would _I_ do that?”

Liam shrugs, biting lazily his sandwich.

“Because if I’m the one asking he takes offense.”

Corey, without apparent reason, starts chuckling and Mason raises his brow.

“Did you try?”

“Yes, right now. I asked him and he walked away all offended.”

Mason’s brow raises even more, quite impressively, considering how close it was already to his hairline.

“Liam, you told him that it’s because of how he is that he’s always alone at lunch. Tell me that wasn’t your way of inviting him to sit with us.”

Put like that it sounds incredibly stupid, but Liam knows better: if there’s something he learnt during the years is that his best friend is able to make all his life look incredibly stupid, and all thanks to the things he does with his eyebrows as he speaks.

“Of course it was, what else was it supposed to be? That guy is so stupid, he never understands anything. Do you know he can’t even play Lacrosse apparently?”

Corey starts laughing harder, probably because the idea of a chimera with supernatural reflexes who can’t play Lacrosse sounds absurd to him as well, while Mason’s brows definitely crosses the borders of his head.

 

*

 

Theo is not used to have people talk to him at lunch and he almost lets his claws slip out when Mason sits at his empty table, right in front of him.

“Liam would like me to tell you that he expressed himself poorly earlier and what he actually meant was that he would like for you to sit with us.”

 

*

 

There’s too much noise for Liam to be able to isolate Theo’s and Mason’s voices, but when his friend comes back to their table the fact that he’s alone kinda speaks for itself.  
“So, what did he say?”

“He said to tell you that he expressed himself poorly as well” Mason sits with a sigh. “And that what he actually meant is...” Liam stares at Mason expectantly, trying to make his brow as expressive as his, probably failing. “...at his point he’d like me to punch you on the nose.”

A part of Liam is indignant and feels the need to stand up and return immediately the punch to Theo, another part instead feels the need to giggle amused and so Liam just stays quiet looking like an idiot.

“You were right anyway, it’s because of this that he’s always alone at lunch” Mason continues.

Liam thought he was right until now, but now that Mason said it, Liam instinctively feels the need to contradict him.

“So he said he won’t come?”

“He wants to break your nose, Liam.” Mason says it like it’s this big news and Liam rolls his eyes impatient.

“Yes, he always wants to break my nose, I want to break his as well, still, it’s not a good reason to not sit together at lunch.”  
“I think it’s a pretty good reason.”

Liam is about to answer, but Corey precedes him, throwing an eloquent look to his boyfriend.    

“Well, _clearly_ Liam thinks it’s not.”

 

*

 

“Liam would like you to sit with us for lunch.”

The one scaring the shit out of Theo is Corey now.

“What Liam would or wouldn’t like doesn’t appear in any way on the list of things I care about.”

“Okay, I’ll tell him that.”

 

*

 

“He said he’ll come if you ask him in person.”

Liam is actually indignant now.

 

*

 

“Who do you think you are, Raeken, the queen of England? Do we need to send you a written invitation to make you move your ass of two feet?”

Theo doesn’t even have the time to lift his eyes from his lunch that it disappears from his hand, while Liam empties his table in a second, placing everything in his own arms.

“Hey, what--”

“You’re not the queen of England.” Liam cuts him off, carrying on his shoulder his bag as well and Theo doesn’t find anything to reply to that: he never was the queen of England, so he just stands up and follows him.

 

*

 

Nobody speaks as Liam empties gradually his arms on the table, disposing all Theo’s belongings and at the end Theo himself, pulling him harshly on the bench next to him. Mason and Corey watch the scene silently and when Liam sits as well the silence immediately colours himself of an embarrassed note, at least in Theo’s head. Not that he ever was the type to feel embarrassment, too good looking and confident for that, but there’s something in sitting with not one, not two, but three people you tried to kill, without being forced by the circumstances or being stuck in matters of life and death, that makes even him uncomfortable.

He doesn’t sense clear hostility coming from Mason and Corey, but he can read on their face the same uneasiness, the same incertitude in starting small talks as if it was nothing, until Liam grabs what’s left of his sandwich and proceeds to break the ice with his dramatic naturalness.

“So, yesterday Theo cried because at Bake off they eliminated his favourite contestant.”

Truth is, Theo should have never came out of the ground.

 

 

 


	9. Trapped

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liam is late for Lacrosse training.   
> (It’s Theo’s fault.)

 

During the week, Theo using Liam’s Lacrosse hoodie as his pyjamas is never a problem: they both wake up at the same time and Liam just has to grab his hoodie from the bathroom or his drawer or wherever Theo leaves it, still warm and impregnated with his scent. Sunday morning is a different story tough: like all the privileged people free from Coach’s evil grip, Theo sleeps until late and Liam has to show all his ninja abilities to undress him silently as he sleeps and slips out of the room with his hoodie. It’s not too hard actually, Theo is a heavy sleeper and usually when Liam walks out of his room he hears the regular heartbeat and slow breathing of who’s sleeping deeply, but not that Sunday.

That Sunday Theo, when Liam lifts his hand trying to free it from the sleeve of his hoodie, immediately wriggle out of his grip and rests his hand on his pillow, close to his head, his eyes still closed. Liam stares at him astonished for several seconds, because normally he just lets Liam move him around without giving any sign of being alive, then he lifts his wrist again and brings a hand to the zip, starting to pull it down. Theo’s naked chest start to peep out as the two edges of the hoodie part gradually and Liam is so focused on his slow movement that when Theo’s arm violently goes back to his pillow, Liam, completely taken aback, gets dragged down with it.

The room is immersed in penumbra and Liam stares warily at the boy at his side, suspicious. If he’s awake and he did it on purpose there will be blood to pay. Liam doesn’t have time to waste with this stupid games.

It doesn’t seem that Theo did it willingly tough: the strands of messy hairs brushing his forehead let Liam have a glimpse of his lowered and relaxed eyelids that, in addition to his regular heartbeat, suggest he’s actually sleeping. Liam won’t punish him for this, he decides, even if he could and nobody could blame him, since it’s Sunday morning and he has just been dragged back in a warm bed after leaving his with so much trouble. But, again, he won’t punish Theo for finally learning how to sleep as normal people, arriving to perfecting the art of heavy sleeping too, which is so much better than the first noisy nights of endless wriggling.

Liam still needs his hoodie tough, so he tries a different approach, remaining lying down but turning on his side, one hand on Theo’s shoulder and the other on the zip. This time he manages to unzip it totally and that’s where the difficult part starts.

That’s also where Liam totally loses his dignity, but luckily it’s dark and the only other person in the room is sleeping, so it’s okay, you’re not actually embarrassing yourself if none is there to see it.

It’s Theo’s fault of course, because he keeps moving and growling softly every time Liam gets closer to being back in possession of his hoodie. The most inappropriate moment is the one where, pinned Theo against the mattress, he finds himself literally climbing on his back, but it’s also the most glorious one, because it’s when he finally frees both Theo’s arms from the sleeves of his hoodie and grips it victorious.

Liam lets himself fall back on the mattress, tired, for just a second, the time to sigh satisfied and enjoy his success in the silence of his room before going on with his life and spend the following hours out in the cold as Coach shouts at him. And that’s exactly his mistake: never lower your guard near Theo Raeken, not even when he’s asleep, _especially_ when he’s asleep.

His hoodie is safe in his left hand at edge of the mattress, but now it’s Liam the one trapped: he had turned on his side giving Theo his back, ready to get up, when it happened.

Liam is too distracted by his own racing heartbeat to check on Theo’s, but it’s clear that he’s still sleeping or this would have never happened. Anyway, sleeping is not an excuse for what he did. Lying to everyone for months, slowly dismantling their pack from the inside, stabbing them all in the back and manipulate Liam into killing his Alpha and then doing it himself, fine, okay, all forgivable, but _this?_ Now Theo has passed every limit.

Liam was just trying to help him, letting him have his hoodie to sleep, and that’s how he thanks him: assaulting him from behind, wrapping his arm around his neck as if Liam was some kind of teddy bear and squeezing him.

Liam can feel Theo’s breath behind his ear, on his neck, and his warm naked chest pressed against his back. The fact that he’s not wearing a shirt makes this even more unacceptable and Liam is particularly frustrated because he can’t even blame it on him, since he’s the one that just undressed him. When Liam is convinced that it can’t be any worst, Theo’s body gets even closer and Liam feels the soft fabric of his sweatpants brush against his naked calf, as Theo rests his leg on his.

Liam’s right hand claws pierce the mattress and he widens his eyes startled, retracting them immediately.

Liam just lost control of his claws apparently and he would worry about it if it wasn’t for the fact that he already lost control of his life – because it’s Sunday morning and he’s in bed with Theo Raeken half naked and pressed against him, clearly a situation nobody with the reins of his life in hand would ever find himself in.   

A plan is necessary right now and so Liam starts thinking.

The fastest solution, as well as the most inviting, seems to be wriggling violently, hit even more violently Theo’s nose, grab his bag, hoodie and dignity and run. The problem with this solution is that Theo would wake up with Liam next to him and for some reason Liam is not okay with it.

Liam keeps thinking for a considerable amount of time, still trapped in Theo’s arms, while Coach and his teammates lose patience in front of his increasingly larger delay. When Liam eventually finds a solution, fifty minutes and thirteen missed calls later, trainings are almost over and nobody expects to see him appear breathless and with his Captain hoodie, which is exactly what happens tough.

 

*

Theo is _hugging_ him and it’s when Liam stops denying it and takes this factor into consideration that he finds the perfect escape plan. It looks like Theo manages to sleep peacefully only thanks to Liam’s scent, this is why he was a little shit always stealing his hoodie, and Liam decided to accept this as a matter of fact, without wondering too much: Theo calms himself and sleeps without nightmares only with his scent under his nose, fine, nothing weird about it, these kind of things happen all the time between ex enemies, Liam guesses. The mysteries of chemistry and other funny stuff.

Theo is sleeping and he’s hugging him tight, his nose right against his neck, and this happened, now he sees it, because Liam stole him his hoodie as he was asleep: Theo must have mistaken him for it and he instinctively tried to get it back, so all Liam has to do is return the hoodie to him and he’ll let him go.

Theo doesn’t let him go of course because God forbid for Liam’s plans to ever work.

He tucks it under his nose, fitting it between his neck and face and also risking to suffocate him at some point, but every time he tries to slip out of his hug Theo growls annoyed and pulls him back harder and the truth is that Liam has no idea why he still hasn’t just simply stuck his fangs in his arm and left, as any sane person would at this point.

Instead he lies there, uncomfortable and late, pretending to be a hoodie and not a werewolf and all of it in order not to wake that idiot of Theo Raeken.

 

*

Liam will never tell Theo why that Sunday morning he made it late to his Lacrosse training. But it’s not like Theo didn’t know it already: he, on the other hand, will never tell Liam he was awake.

 

 

 


	10. Little Red Riding Hood and The Big Bad Wolf

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If it was up to Liam, he would have stayed home watching a new episode of The Walking Dead that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter, like every chapter before actually, was born from a prompt of my friend. The prompt was "Evak", if you don't know who they are, you should. (Skam)

 

It starts in the middle of sweaty bodies and the smell of smoke in an apartment at the last floor that the next day will receive noise complaints for the music too loud and it ends at dawn with wet lips and sweet splashes of water in the basements of a sleepy house. _Liam didn’t even want to do anything for Halloween._

Mason has been insisting annoyingly since that morning and the worst part is that it’s not even because he actually wants to go to this Emma’s party, Liam knows that, it’s just because he wants to see _him_ dressed like that.

“I’m begging you, Liam, I won’t ever ask you anything for the rest of my life, I promise, but you _have to._ ” Liam, just like the first time Mason asked him and, mostly, showed him, doesn’t feel like he _has_ to, at all. “If you care about our friendship, if I ever meant anything to you, wear this to the party.”

Liam is not a selfish or unreasonable person, at all: he accepted already to meet his friend’s needs with a perfect compromise.

“I told you already, Mason: either I wear that thing and we spend an easy Halloween at home, me, you and Corey, or I _don’t_ wear that thing and we go to the costume party. It’s your choice.”

Liam is so incredibly reasonable and helpful, unlike Mason.

It’s from that morning that he insists and it’s almost dinner time now, so it’s a lot. Liam doesn’t even remember inviting him and Corey to dinner, it just happened naturally, one moment they were exhausting him at school and the moment later they were doing it at home, always with that _thing_ in their hands. It’s just when Liam walks out of the bathroom and the red cloak suddenly flies in his face, threw by Corey’s invisible hands, that he gave up with a resigned sigh very similar to a growl.

“ _Fine!_ I’ll dress as fricking little red riding hood and we’ll go to that damn party, happy?”

Corey and Mason share the same enthusiast smile, but it’s not them who answer and Liam instantly regrets he was born.  
“ _Ecstatic.”_

Theo, leather jacket and car keys in his hand, clearly just got back home, stares at him from the other side of the hallway with a wide smirk.

Liam never hated Halloween as much as he does now.

 

 

 

“There’s no such thing as little red riding hood with combat boots, Liam.”

Mason has some nerve complaining or even speaking to him after what he did.

“If you pull out those flats again I swear I’ll tuck them in your mouth.”

Liam is wearing a _skirt_ and a red cape and the only reason he accepted this it’s that he thought it was going to be a group thing, that he, Mason and Corey would have all showed up to the party with the same joking vibe, like an hymn to the ridiculous, and instead those two traitors showed up at his place, just one hour before the party, dressed as sexy vampires, because that’s what happens when you trust your best friends, you end up representing the concept of grotesque while they look all hot and badass. Of fucking course.

It doesn’t matter how out of place they are under his skirt, Liam will die before he let someone rip his black, muddy combat boots from his feet.

“Fine, no flats” Mason shakes his head in resignation and then he pulls out his phone. “Now smile, Hayden wants to see you.”

“She’ll see me at the party, like everyone” Liam mutters vaguely depressed and then the flash blinds him.

When Hayden, after some weeks of post break up silence, approached him at school to suggest they stay friends, Liam accepted hesitant, afraid that it would be embarrassing, but the truth is that it was a lot more natural than he expected. When Hayden introduced him her new boyfriend, Liam didn’t even feel the impulse of breaking his jaw.

 

 

 

Theo usually tries not to stay too much in the way when Mason and Corey come over: even if they now spend almost every lunch break together and sometimes they involve him in their after school activities, Theo still isn’t sure about his role inside the group, or if he even has one, and so he never forces his presence if not explicitly requested. But tonight he can’t help but entering Liam’s room every two seconds, because Mason and Corey are dressing him as little red riding hood and Theo cares about respecting the delicate balances of his _not exactly friendship_ with the others, he does, but not as much as he cares about laughing his ass off.

The third time he peeps out the room he finds Liam’s dressing complete.

It’s also when he hears Liam saying that Hayden will meet him at the party and when he forgets to laugh, despite Liam being even more ridiculous than before. He didn’t know they started dating again.

“Hey Theo, what about you, you come?” Mason suddenly turns towards him, a questioning look on his face. “It’s a costume party of a girl we don’t exactly know, but she invited basically the whole school.”

That’s what Theo means with not being sure of his role in the group: it’s not like they directly exclude him, but an invitation half an hour before the party is not exactly considering him _part_ of the group. It’s also Mason’s absent tone, his glance that runs to his phone absorbed, like his answer didn’t really matter.

Liam keep staring at him instead, expectant, and Theo look back surprised.

“Yes, why not” He shrugs. The corner of Liam’s mouth raises imperceptibly upward and Theo stares at it for several second before reflecting that it will be _Mason and Corey,_ and _Liam and Hayden_ , and not Liam and Theo, and then he adds: “I’ll ask Sarah.”

 

 

 

 

***

“Oh god, I _love_ it.”

Emma, the girl who threw the party, _loves_ Liam’s mask and she’s not the only one: everyone points at him and laugh or they come closer to high five him and take a picture, even if most of them can’t see the irony of a werewolf dressed like little red riding hood.

Emma _loves_ Liam’s mask and she’s been closed to him all evening, but when she had to reward the best costume she still didn’t choose Liam and this bothered him incredibly. It’s not like he gives a damn about that stupid competition, but when the winner steps on the stage –an unsteady little table- to accept the prize, a tequila bottle, with his fangs accompanied smile and his unnaturally golden eyes, well, that pissed Liam off.

Easy winning when your mask is not even a mask.

Everybody laughed and took pictures of Liam, but everyone congratulated Theo for his werewolf mask: they touched his pointed ears and the fur on his cheeks, his claws – _retractable too! –_ and the fangs and ‘ _who did your awesome make up?’ ‘Where did you get the contact lens?’_ and Theo is so clearly enjoying every second of it.

Liam feels that familiar feeling stirring in his chest, the unmotivated annoyance asking aloud to flow outside. Some people asked for a picture with the big bad wolf and little red and as much as Theo’s face was shifted to look more like a beast, it’s Liam’s glare the most frightening thing in those pictures.

What’s really ridiculous is that Sarah and her friends are the ones drinking the tequila, since Theo didn’t want it for obvious reasons, and it’s not like Liam wants it, because of his werewolf healing disposing immediately of alcohol, it’s that the prize for the best mask shouldn’t been drank by a girl dressed like a sexy nurse, it’s just wrong. It’s wrong towards the guy dressed like a pumpkin over there in the corner, he probably took a lot of time to perfecting his costume and all he got was to be bitten constantly by drunk people, while _Sarah,_ just because she’s there with Theo, can...

“Hey, can I take a picture of you two?”

The kid has already his camera out and a condescending Theo behind him and Liam feels his fangs slipping out even if he never decided it and a low growl escaping his throat.

Theo widens his eyes and so the little kid, except that instead of screaming he smiles with heart eyes.

“I don’t believe it, you dressed like the wolf dressed like little red! Genius! How did y--”

The kid keeps rattle on and a part of Liam knows this is the moment where he focuses and retracts his fangs, but the truth is that he doesn’t care, his heart beats like crazy and all he can see is Sarah handing the bottle to her friends and looking around for Theo, all of it in her banal costume and her...

Liam had registered only absently the iron grip on his wrist, but when a door suddenly shout out the noise of people and music, he knows Theo just dragged him into the bathroom.

“What the hell are you doing?” Theo is whispering, like someone could hear them with all that noise.

“ _Me?_ You!” Liam shoves him harshly on his chest, making him take a step back. He knows what’s happening now, he knows he’s the one having a problem and that it’s his fault if he can’t control his unmotivated bursts of anger, not of the people around him. But right now he doesn’t care: Theo is just too _perfect_ to blame. “And now move and let me out!”

Theo raises his brows, ridiculously calm compared to Liam.  
“Sure, after you retracted your fangs, Liam.”   

Oh, of course, Liam can’t walk out of the bathroom with his fangs out but Theo can go around completely shifted like it was nothing.

“And what about your fangs, uh? Or your eyes? Or your entire _face?”_

“I’m not dressed like little red riding hood, Liam. It’s not suspicious.”

He keeps repeating his name and Liam knows why: Theo calms himself sniffing his scent on his Lacrosse hoodie, while Liam calms down hearing Theo saying his name.

Not that Liam is _calm_ now, but he feels his need to roar disappearing slowly. He’s still annoyed, but it’s a more human irritation, far away from the wolf.

“Yeah, well, it’s still dangerous.” He snorts retracting his fangs. “You can’t risk exposing us all because you didn’t want to look for an actual mask.”

He’d like to add something about Sarah’s mask banality, because that somehow is also the point, but he can’t find a way to say it aloud without it sounding like nonsense. He can’t find a logical sense to it not even in his head to be honest.

“And those idiots even let you win.” He adds snorting bitter, glaring a little. Theo is wearing a black tank that leaves his muscled shoulders naked and a pair of ripped jeans. It’s not a good costume at all, if he wasn’t an actual werewolf he wouldn’t look like it at all.

“Is this why you’re so mad?” Theo smirks glancing at him all gloating. “Because my costume got more success than yours?”

What really, more than anything else, calms Liam down is Theo’s nose breaking under his knuckles, wiping out every single time his little smirks from his face.

“I’m still working on my anger by the way” He adds as he climbs Theo’s body and walks out of the room.

“Good to know” He hears him as the door close behind him and it’s once again stunning music in his ears and sweaty bodies bumping into him.

Liam really doesn’t know what people see in Halloween.  


 

 

“Theo, here you are!”

Sarah’s hands are on his shoulders in a heartbeat and Theo can’t blame her: he has nice shoulders, the type that make a girl’s head spin around, like he has a nice everything after all, he’s always been perfectly aware of it. If there  is something Theo can’t stand in people is fake modesty, because there’s no reason to pretend you’re not some greek god when you are.

Sarah is not bad herself, an ordinary beauty and a bit banal.

When she left him her number that day at the park Theo didn’t think he was going to call her: she’s objectively perfect and maybe that’s the problem. Theo pursued the dream of perfection for so long, year after year, he literally stole his sister's heart to become the perfect evil the Dread Doctors dreamed of, and everything that attracts him now, that  _really_  attracs him, instinctively and viscerally, it's the furthest from perfection he could ever imagined. It's the unusual, the detail out of place, it's the muddy boots under the skirt of little red riding hood.

Theo is perfectly capable of controlling his emotions, he can shape and model them as much as he needs to make them advantageous for him, he can fake them and hide them and this always put him one step ahead of everyone, this is what made manipulating a pack of teens prey of their instincts and most irrational passions easy as drinking a glass of water.

There’s something ironic in the fact that what is disorienting him and leaving him completely defenceless is now the most incapable of everyone to control himself, the kid that let his stomach and shots of anger drive him, that growls against him that he will use him as bait and then he saves his life ten minutes later, everything believing it fiercely, always.

Opposites attract is the saying, but the truth is that there’s nothing lucid about the way Theo called Sarah right after hearing that Hayden was going to be at the party, and maybe deep down he and Liam are not so different. Just because he can control perfectly his fangs and the colour of his eyes it doesn’t mean Theo hasn’t completely lost control. It doesn’t mean he hasn’t lost it _for weeks._

Sarah’s warm tongue pushes against his almost animalistic and that is _still_ Theo, despite everything, and so it doesn’t matter if from the outside it seems like there’s no self-control or lucidity, just his strong arms pressed against her delicate back, impatient and possessives, and her white arms around his neck, two mouths looking for each other with no pause, an undeniable passion burning. It doesn’t matter because that’s Theo and faking has always been is biggest talent, and it’s not even pretending because the passion is there, it’s strong and it burns and it never leaves him alone from weeks and it may seem like he’s not in control, completely oblivious to the eyes on him, but he retracted his fangs awhile ago and when he stops pretending and he suddenly opens his eyes without parting from Sarah, he knows exactly where to look and he knows whose gaze he’ll meet.

 

 

Liam widens his eyes taken aback and for a second is clear what he’s thinking, Theo just caught him staring at him making out with a girl, but before he can even try to look away embarrassed, Theo brings both his hands to Sarah’s face and kiss her again, impetuous, without taking his eyes off Liam that, some feet away, doesn’t understand a single word of what Emma is saying.

It’s not exactly a challenge, but Liam takes it anyway and after a second of hesitation Emma’s lips are against his and his eyes still on Theo, because Liam, on the other hand, was never good at the all self control thing.  

 

 

 

“Corey.”

“Yes?”

“Do you see what I see?”

“Liam and Theo aggressively making out with two girls while not taking their eyes off each other?”

“Exactly.”

“I should probably be more surprised.”

 

 

 

***

It was weird, okay. The party goes on and some part of Liam’s brain is focused all the time on noting how it was incredibly weird. Not the kiss, because well, Liam is single and Emma is cute and she _loves_ his mask, so why wouldn’t he kiss her –apart from the fact that she didn’t choose him as the best costume of course- but he didn’t think about kissing her until Theo started staring at him as he hooked up with that Sarah, Liam didn’t think about it until that exact moment, when Theo opened his eyes and fixed them on him, only then Liam found himself making out with Emma without ever deciding it.

And he kept staring at Theo even after, when he had her soft lips on his and Theo kept staring too and they went like this for a vague amount of time, like hypnotized, and it’s without doubt the weirdest shit Liam did in all his life, even more than becoming a werewolf, so Liam really doesn’t see why he should think about it: only stupid people start thinking about things they can’t explain and Liam is everything but stupid.

Emma and Sarah are friends of course, because this is the sense of humour of whoever is holding the reins of Liam’s life, and so when the home empties and everyone go to Billy, who’s throwing another party a few houses from there, it’s just him ad Emma and Sarah and Theo helping cleaning a little.

There are several things Liam doesn’t get about this.

First of all, who the hell is this Billy and why now Emma and Sarah want to go to his party, or why _everyone_ suddenly went there, when they were _already_ at a party. Wouldn’t have been faster and more logic to make this Billy come to Emma’s party instead of suddenly moving Emma’s party to Billy’s? Liam suddenly feels so old in front of this.

And then of course, Liam thought he stayed to help clean the house, since he contracted this moral obligation when he kissed the owner of the house, but what they’re actually doing is sit on the couch chatting while the sweep of empty glasses on the ground stays untouched.

It’s mostly Emma, Sarah and Liam, who can never shut up, not even when he has nothing to say, to do the talking actually, while Theo is unusually silent. It’s weird seeing him like this, calmly sit sipping his drink but with his fangs out, his eyes gold and his face enraged by the wolf’s features. It’s not weird for Sarah or Emma surely, since they think it’s just make up, as if Theo was some guru make up artist, but for Liam, who always saw those features during fights and dangerous circumstances, it’s incredibly out of place. He’s also a little envious, even if he doesn’t want to admit it not even to himself: who knows how it is to be so in control on your transformation that you can just stay shifted like that for so long in such a calm situation.

Liam would have accidentally ripped Sarah’s tongue out a few hours before if he was in his place.

But then again, it’s not like Liam is not risking of ripping Sarah’s tongue out already.

 

 

 

Theo has grown tired of listening Sarah’s and Emma’s chatting half an hour ago, but it’s when they’re about to head out to go to some Billy’s party that he decides for definitely sending his self-control to hell and act like every other irrational teen.

The girls went to the bathroom, rigorously together, and he and Liam are getting ready to leave, which in Theo’s case means putting on his leather jacket and for Liam is pulling up his red hoodie it seems. It’s in that moment that Theo gives up, while Liam pulls up the hoodie of his cape and he tightens it around his neck as to not get cold, completely nonchalantly and clearly without the least bit of worry about how ridiculous that looks from the outside. It’s just too much, and so Theo does what the Big Bad Wolf always does and he kidnaps Little Red. 

 

 

 

Liam is not sure of what exactly happened, one moment he was waiting for Sarah and Emma to get out of the bathroom to head out and finally meeting this Billy, and a moment later Theo was dragging him downstairs with no explanation. What Liam knows is that they’re on a bike now, Theo in front, pedaling, and Liam uncomfortably sit on the back side of the seat, clinging on Theo’s waist and with his skirt fluttering hard and whipping his thighs. Liam didn’t even want to come to this Halloween party and now it’s 4 a.m. and at the last floor of a building there are two girls insulting him as he speeds in the night on a stolen bike: Theo ripped it from the fence in the courtyard, easily breaking the chain like it was a blade of grass, and in all this Liam could have stopped him infinite times and instead he was his accomplice.

He protested of course, he asked him several times what he was doing, he told him to stop and wait, but he never used his werewolf strength to get free of his grip, nobody forced him to get on the bike, nobody is keeping him from jumping down now and walk back to Emma or towards home, nobody except Theo.

It’s not like he’s actually _doing_ something to hold him, he has both hands on the handlebar now and, again, he _didn’t_ force Liam on the bike, he didn’t use that much strength while dragging him out of Emma’s place and under the nocturnal sky, he just started laughing and it was enough.

He retracted his fangs and his face went back to the boy and not the wolf, that face ten times more beautiful and dangerous. The same face that fooled them all months ago and Liam lets him drag him downstairs without a particle of resistance, because Theo laughs like a child and suddenly Liam feels that he could convince him to revolt against his Alpha one more time, except this time he’d have success, because Theo prompts him to run and he keeps laughing and his laugh is all that remain in Liam’s head.

The bike speeds fast in the empty streets and their screams and free laughs, a little drunk without any of them having drank, break the silence of the sleepy city and Liam hugs Theo tighter not to fall from the bike and Halloween was always his favourite festivity.

 

 

 

***

Theo thinks he’s _so_ smart, as if Liam didn’t know perfectly that they’re entering from a window in the garden just because Theo has no idea who owns that pool. As if someone with some _family friends_ could ever find himself sleeping in a car for weeks, please.

“They’re family friends and they’re on holiday.” Theo repeats impassive, leaning closer to help Liam get down of the window and it’s not even an actual lie.

“What family, yours or the one you held hostage for weeks to _pretend_ to be yours?”

Theo grins guilty and steps back, because Liam glared at him when he held his hand out. He’s a Lacrosse champion and a fucking werewolf, just because he’s dressed like Little Red doesn’t mean he suddenly needs help climbing a window.

What Liam didn’t consider is the _skirt_ and when he falls to the ground face first, Theo’s suffocated laugh covers his whines of pain. He stands up hardly with wet eyes and a clearly broken nose and Theo is still on his knees laughing, right in front of him, so close to the edge of the pool.

Theo’s laughs shift into an imprecation just a second before getting drown in a fountain of water and now is Liam the one laughing victorious.

Calmly he starts untying his red cloak and kicks away his boots and Theo still hasn’t emerged yet. Liam knows exactly what he’s doing and so he keeps undressing himself even slower, taking off the skirt and the cape and keeping his back to the pool. Despite the water, he can still hear Theo’s heartbeat, so much faster than usual because Theo has the ability to control it and he’s _so_ trying, but Liam will let him drown before falling for it, and eventually Theo resurfaces breathless and annoyed.

“Asshole” He mutters reaching for the edge and hoisting himself up.

His wet shirt is sticking completely to his chest and Liam stares the little drops of water sliding on his muscular arms a bit too longer before kneeling and hitting fast both Theo’s arms, at the height of his elbow. His ridiculously hot exit from the pool, not even he thought he was in a calendar or something, suddenly collapse to the ground as Theo’s hands slip and he ruinously belly flops, his legs still in the water and his chin on the wet tiles of the poolside.

“This is for stealing my prize as best costume by cheating” Liam says while Theo rolls on the ground like a fish out of water, a suffering grimace on his face and his hands on his chin. Then, just in his boxer, he runs, avoid with a jump Theo’s grumbling body and cannon balls himself into the pool.

 

 

Theo is pretty sure he broke his chin and it’s in moment like this that he remembers why he once wanted to kill everyone in Beacon Hills.

Then his chin slowly heals, Liam keeps swimming in his underwear a few feet from him and Theo forget it again.

 

 

“You suck at holding your breath anyway” Liam comments, because Theo is taking off his wet jeans and Liam suddenly feels the need to remember out loud his many defects. That ass is not one of them.

“Oh yeah?” Theo throws in a corner the cluster of wet fabric that once was his shirt and then he must have used his werewolf speed, the damn bastard, because all Liam knows is that a second later his head is underwater and it doesn’t matter how hard he fight to surface again, there is an iron grip holding him down. Liam doesn’t have an actual fighting plan and maybe that’s why the battle lasts that long, when pulling your head out of the water shouldn’t be that difficult. Even after, once he’s back above the water level, Liam still hasn’t clear the dynamic of the battle, he just knows that at one point he tried to dragged Theo down as well and that’s why on his neck, made shiny by the water, there are now some bright red scratches, and he also knows that at one point he bite as hard as he could and even if then he didn’t know which part of Theo’s body was, he can now sees the marks of his teeth on his shoulder.

“Son of a bitch” He growls between one cough and the other, feeling the water even inside his lungs. There are some red trials in the water around them and none of them it’s his, because Theo didn’t use his claws, with the only goal of drowning him.

“Who sucks at holding his breath then?” Theo has a challenging smirk on his lips as the scratches on his neck heal quickly, rebuilding his perfect skin.  
“Fuck you, I wasn’t ready” Liam snorts, splashing him in the eyes. Theo close them chuckling, his beginner breath laboured as he moves to  stay afloat. “To the three.”

“Okay, Little Red.”

“One, two...”

Theo looks at him weirdly now, his nose half submerged by the water. He vaguely reminds Liam of a shark waiting.

“Three!”

Liam closes his eyes, takes a deep breath and dive in.

The comforting silence that there’s always underwater wraps him for barely a second before the noise of his heartbeat and the vibrant one of the spotlights of the pool take over, amplified by his werewolf senses. Liam is a champion at holding his breath, he always was, since he was a child, and as he slowly breathe out from his nose keeping his eyes close he knows he has the victory in his hands.

This until Theo doesn’t decide to cheat and he suddenly put a hand around his throat.

Liam immediately opens his eyes, feeling them burn in the chlorine, just to find himself face to face with Theo’s absorbed expression. Liam shoves his arm back with a firm hit and he’s about to flip him off, just to make it clear that his little cheating games don’t work and he’s still the winner, but Theo precedes him. It’s a sudden dart and pretty inaccurate, in fact Theo’s lips crash against his, with excessive strength, for just a second before they end up on his nose.

Liam gets shoved back because of the strength Theo’s lips shoved his and for the second time that night he almost drowns it. As he surfaces again, he hears Theo’s exultant _yes_.

“ _Yes_ what?” He asks immediately, breathless.

“I won.” Theo says like nothing happened, a triumphant smile on that unnerving face of his.

“You won?” Liam repeats incredulous.

“I won” Theo insists, giggling all happy.

“You absolutely didn’t” Liam protest indignant. Years and years being the best in every apnea contest and then it comes Theo Raeken that...”This is cheating!”

“What is cheating?” Theo stares right in his eyes, suddenly more serious, despite the corner of his mouth still clearly curled up.

“ _That_ was cheating.”

“You think there are rules, Liam?”

Considering he's an apnea champion, Liam suddenly feels out of breath.

“You cheated, it’s not allowed.” He insists clearing his throat. “I won’t accept loosing for something like that. We need to do it again.”

“Okay.” Theo keeps smiling. “At the three?”

“Who comes back up last is the winner” Liam declares, like it wasn’t obvious. “Of everything.”  
“Okay.”

Theo keeps smiling in that way.

Liam takes a deep breath. “I’m ready.”  
“We go at three” Theo says but Liam shakes his head.

“No, at one.” He didn’t realize he’s smiling too. “Three, two, _one.”_

Liam doesn’t close his eyes this time.

Theo is not smiling anymore, he’s stays there in front of him, still, his hair swaying around his face and his big eyes glued to his, waiting. Liam wonders how long he’s been waiting.

 

Their first kiss doesn’t make noise.

It’s wrapped in water and silence and in the regular beating of their hearts, in some kind of alternative world, in the depths of a pool that’s not even theirs.

 

 

It’s just a few seconds that they stay there looking at each other without moving, but it seems like an eternity and Liam realizes it’s been much longer since they started doing that, they’ve been sitting there on the bottom of that pool for much longer, staring at each other in silence. Without breathing.

Liam is the first to move this time.

They’ve been a few seconds underwater, but he doesn’t know why the hell they waited all that time outside.

It’s not an impetuous sprint like Theo’s, it’s a slow movement, but determinate and irreversible, like that _thing_ between them always has been, since the start, since Liam clenched the cold hilt of the sword between his hands and brought him back afloat the first time.

Theo’s lips are soft and gentle this time, maybe because they both know that there’s no hurry, even if they’re a little late. It’s just the two of them there in the water, no pack or Sarah with the h, nor Mason or Corey or Hayden, there’s a blue barrier of silence to separate them from everything now and the only thing that exists down there is Liam and Theo and nobody else. Nothing beyond the perfect truthfulness of their tongues meeting each other and stroking slow, wrapped in the water.

Liam’s fingers grip Theo’s neck as an invisible force slowly pushes their body upwards and when they surface they’re still kissing, they keep going even more into it, skin against skin, intertwined fingers between dripping hair, chest against chest, and they both know that there’s no coming back from there, that their kiss is not just a secret whispered underwater in a separate world with its own rules, is the impetuous desire above the level of water, with the air filling their lungs and the loud scream of the little girl staring at them from the door.

 

Liam knew they weren’t family friends.

 

_“Run, run, come on!”_

_“The cape, take the cape!”_

_“Fuck, my shoes!”_

_“Let’s get out, quick!”_

 

 

The night air on his wet skin is cold and it hits his face almost painfully, while Theo, completely soaked as well and just in his underwear, keeps pedalling fast, laughing. Liam holds with an arm a damp tangle of clothes, while the red capes flutters on his shoulders, the laces tickling his neck, and with the other arm he grips himself at the boy in front of him.

Liam can do two things at this point, after a night like this, while he speeds towards home on a stolen bike after a stolen bath, and the first of those two things is thinking. Retracing with his mind, reflect, analyse, classify, taking decisions, all activities Liam’s mind tends to do all the time without ever actual results and that night gave him material for years.

The other thing Liam can do is, well, _not_ thinking, which is what Liam likes to do most of the time.

It’s cold and Theo is wet and half naked in front of him and he keeps laughing carefree and for Liam is not really an hard choice. His arm tightens harder around Theo’s waist as he leans closer and rests his chin on his naked shoulder, closing his eyes and inhaling slowly.

 

 

When Theo feels first Liam’s nose and then his warm mouth resting against his shoulder, he can’t help but turning around towards him, an happy smile on his lips. Liam opens his eyes and for once he doesn’t have anything to protest, he returns the smile without talking and then he flies face first on the asphalt.

The tree, whatever Theo says, was there first.

 

 

 


	11. After (never a joy)

_When Liam decided he wasn’t going to think about it, what he had in mind was basically going back home, hiding under his blankets and turn off his brain. But an ambush from the hunters works fine too, he guesses._

 

 

“Not even a _bike_ you can drive, how did you survive this long?”

“I can drive perfectly, thanks, you distracted me.”

“Me? Or maybe it was the twenty feet tree you crashed against?”

“Oh sorry, I must have missed the part where you saw it and warned me. Oh wait, maybe it’s because it _didn’t happen?”_

“I wasn’t aware I had to warn you not to throw yourself at full speed against a three, Theo, but now that I know I’ll take note for the future.”

 

Bantering with Theo is a way like others to _not_ think about it, as well as the only way Liam knows of interacting with him, and he’s not in a hurry to stop, he’s perfectly fine with the idea of keep going actually, it’s just that he wants to do it on the bike, pressed again against his naked back. That’s why he leans quickly on the bike to see the damage and besides the handlebar a little wry it’s not even that bad, at least until Theo doesn’t shoves him on it, harshly and suddenly.

Liam falls to the ground, kneels painfully pressed against the bike under him and palms against the hard asphalt. Theo, the fricking sociopath, pushed him to the ground for no reason just as Liam was silently dying from the need to go back on the bike and hug him again and this bothers him so much. He would tell him, except for the part where he wanted to hug him of course, but Theo wouldn’t hear him over the sound of the gunshots and his own roar. Where is Theo anyway? With all that dark smoke Liam can’t even see him.

_“McCall’s beta, take the beta, quick!” “Watch out!” “Wolfsbane, now!”_

Liam can’t understand how many voices there are, they seem to come from every direction and the more disparate noises and smells follow each other without him being able to decipher them: there’s the strong smell of blood and another one, acrid and pungent, that seems to weaken him more and more as it enters his nostrils, noise of shooting and fight. The shape of a body flying next to him suddenly appears over the thick greyish fog and Liam manages to finally kick the bike away and land his bare feet on the asphalt. There’s nothing else to stumble on, but his legs keep trembling and Liam finds himself hitting his knees again, while the ground gets closer and closer to his face.

_“The other, the other!” “Take him!”_

Liam tries to recollect his strength and shift, but all he can do is cough, kneeled on the ground, until Theo growls. Liam doesn’t know exactly when, during which battle they found themselves fighting side by side, he learnt to read his growls so well, but what rips the night is a growl of pain and Liam stands up and, with more wolfsbane than oxygen in his lungs, growls as well. And his, well, his is a growl of anger.

Theo is somewhere in the middle of the fog and the screaming and the gunshots and he’s hurt.

_Theo is hurt._

Liam growls again, fangs and golden eyes peeping out his red cloak as he goes forward to where he heard Theo earlier and the turmoil around him immediately becomes louder: someone screams something and right after the air around his head is a dark fog and Liam finds himself inhaling a black dust that _should_ hurt, Liam knows that, but the truth is that he’s too angry to even feel pain. He’s running in the middle of the fog, completely exposed and with his sight hampered, instead of seeking repair, and this is exactly the opposite of what Scott taught him, but Theo is there somewhere and Liam can’t find him.

His ears register the gunshot only when his eyes have already spot the blood dripping from his own chest, where the bullet made his way inside his flesh. The pain comes only when the rifle is already on the ground and Liam’s claws are wet with still warm blood. His growl thunders in the night and it’s not because of his anger or the hunters, it’s a call and it doesn’t matter if he’s telling everyone his position, because _he can’t find him_. Once again all he can breathe is the wolfsbane and his knees meet the asphalt again. His chest burns like someone dig an incandescent hole in it and Theo keeps not answering back.

“ _Come on, come on! It’s done, let’s go!”_

Liam growls again and he tries to stand, while the fog starts fading away and the footsteps around him fasten their pace. The sound of the car leaving is the last thing he hears before losing consciousness.

“ _Liam, Liam, help!”_

The car and Theo’s scared voice.

 

 

 

 


	12. Anchor (don't punch it)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liam is mad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So from now on the rest of the chapters are a little longer which means I might take a while to translate them or maybe not, it depends on how my insomnia goes. And on how you like them because I understand italian anyway and I kinda wrote them, so no point in translating them just for me, you know. So like, give me a sign. Sorry for the typos!

 

 

_There was wolfsbane everywhere._

_Why doesn’t he wake up?_

_Scott doesn’t answer, damn it._

_How much do you think he inhaled?_

_Liam? Liam hey buddy, open your eyes._

“Theo,” Liam’s voice is a feeble whisper. His throat is on fire. “They took Theo.”

_Liam, hey! Why did he faint again? You said the antidote worked!_

_It worked, but we still have to trigger the healing process._

 

 

When Liam opens his eyes, the first thing he sees is his alpha.

“Scott?”  
“Hello, Liam.”

Scott smiles at him, then he breaks his arm and Liam faints again.

 

 

 

When Liam opens his eyes again and sees Scott, he winces back instinctively, but Scott raises his hands innocently.

“I had to trigger the healing process, I’m sorry.”

And the healing process definitely kicked in, because after two seconds Liam is on his feet, not a scratch on his body, not a stain on the clothes someone put on him, not a single sign of what just happened. Except for the fact that Liam is wearing shirt and pants he doesn’t own and that smell like Mason and Mason only and Liam is not used to that, because there’s always on his clothes, _always,_ a vague trace of Theo, Theo who’s always in the way and always touches all Liam’s stuff, except that now he’s not. They’re all there, Mason, Corey, Deaton, Argent and even Malia and Scott who Liam didn’t see in months, they’re all there in the clinic, gathered around him, but Theo is not there and Liam can’t breathe.

“They took Theo” he says again, ignoring Deaton’s attempt to drag him back on the litter. Liam doesn’t _need_ to lie down, he’s perfectly capable of standing because Scott broke his arm and Liam healed, just like that. What he needs now is to find Theo and break his nose, triggering his healing process as well, and so Theo will be fine. And then Liam will break his nose again, for good measure. What Liam needs right now is to find him. “They took Theo.”

“I tried to call him earlier but he doesn’t answer” Mason sighs and Liam feels irritation mixing with impatience because of fucking course he doesn’t answer, they _took_ him and his phone ended up in the pool with him when Liam shoved him into it. _The pool._ It was just a few hours before, but it seems a life ago.

“He’s not at your place either” Corey adds and the metal table makes a loud noise under Liam’s palm.

“I _said_ they took him!” he snaps and he’s vaguely aware of his too much aggressive tone, of his troubled breathing typical of his bursts of anger, and he’s totally aware of how he doesn’t give a fuck. _Theo is not there_ and Liam is going crazy.

“Who took him?” Scott asks stepping closer. “Did you see anyone? Were they Monroe’s men or...”

“I don’t know who they were, I didn’t see them” Liam shakes his head, nervous, letting his gaze run around the room, restless. They’re all standing there, looking at him, without doing anything, while Theo is hurt who knows there and every seconds is like a slap to his face. “We’re wasting time, we need to find him now.”

“We can’t if we don’t know where to look, Liam” Scott says and he keeps repeating his name as if he was trying to calm him, as if it could work, as if at every _Liam_ he didn’t feel the need to bite someone grow.

“We know they were hunters, they used wolfsbane” Argent says with his expert tone, because of course he’s an expert, he’s an hunter too after all and Liam was never bothered by that as he’s now. He doesn’t even know why he has to be there with them when the hunters are the fucking enemy. It’s because of the hunters that Theo is not there and Liam has to close his eyes and take a deep breath to stop himself from shifting. _The sun, the moon, the truth. The sun, the moon..._

“Liam, focus.” It’s Mason and Liam stops repeating the useless mantra. It doesn’t work anyway. He didn’t use it in months. “Can’t you remember anything? Some detail that can help us find them? Find him?”

_The sun. The moon. The truth._

_“McCall’s beta, take the beta, quick!”_

Liam widens his eyes at the sudden realization.

“They were looking for me” he says and everyone’s eyes are on him now. “ _McCall’s beta_ they said. They wanted me.”

“To get to Scott” Malia nods. “It’s Monroe again.”

“Why leave him wounded in the middle of the street then?” Argent frowns. “When they could have taken him easily?”

_“It’s done.”_

“They thought he was me. They took Theo thinking he was me.”

Liam is _so_ mad now.

Fricking incompetent hunters. That they took Theo for some evil purpose was irritating already, but that they did it accidentally is even worse. After the sword, the Ghost Riders, after the Anukite, after the fall caused by the failing of his own evil plans that Theo might die because of a mistake is just ridiculous.

After all the times he escaped death, Liam won’t allow him to die in such a stupid way, the only time he doesn’t deserve it. He faced completely unprepared the beast of Geuvedan, he’s been dragged underground by his dead sister’s living body, he ran alone towards more Ghost Riders than he could count and every single time he refused to die, with the smug stubborn face of who doesn’t know how to loose, and there’s no way it ends like this.

If they realized their mistake...Liam can’t even think about it, because the truth is that no matter how senseless it is, Liam would go out of his mind in a world where Theo Raeken doesn’t exist anymore. Liam is _already_ going out of his mind.

Time runs and everyone keeps talking and talking, they make hypothesis and then they talk again and there’s no way to skip all this, the part of Liam still vaguely lucid knows that, but he also knows that whatever the hunters are doing to Theo in that exact moment, they’re not stopping it. _He’_ s not stopping it.

It’s the way he called his name while they were dragging him into the car, right before Liam’s world went back. It’s the fact that he called Scott in the same way while his sister was dragging him underground and nobody did anything to help him.

And this time Theo called him, even if Liam was right next to Scott as Tara was dragging him into that hole, he called him and he asked for help and he trusted him and all the wolfsbane in the world is not enough to justify Liam for not answering him. For not standing on his feet and save him this time.

 

 

 

Liam didn’t notice Deaton walk out of the room, but when he gets back and leans on Scott he hears perfectly his whisper.

“Who woke up?” he snaps immediately, drawing everyone’s gaze. Deaton looks unsure and Scott sighs.

“When the Sheriff found you, you weren’t alone.

Liam takes awhile to get it, but then it’s clear.

“ _What?_ We have one of them?” _Now_ Liam is mad: they’ve been there wasting time talking and talking when they _have one of them._ “Where is he?”   

“He just woke up, Liam, he wasn’t in good shape. We had to take him to the hospital, I don’t know if you remember, but you...” Scott seems convinced that talking to him has still some utility now, when Liam has been done with that room in the exact moment he heard _hospital._ Theo is not there and Liam knows how to find him now and there’s nothing else to add.

“Liam, wait” Scott steps in front of him, as if Liam wasn’t already trying to control his anger for the fact that they he one of them and took him to the hospital, instead of sticking his claws into his neck and pull everything they need to know from his head. “He just woke up, my mother called right now. The sheriff is already interrogating him, let’s just give him ten minutes and...”

Ten minutes is perfect, is just the time Liam will need to reach the hospital leaving in that exact moment, which is exactly what he intends to do. He’d say it out loud if it wasn’t for the fact that the only thing that escapes his throat is a low, constant growl, that suddenly gets louder when Scott steps in front of him for the second time. Liam is not sure since how long he bared his fangs and claws, but they’re there now and Mason’s voice behind him sounds weird like he was talking from another dimension.

“Liam, hey, repeat with me come on, _the sun, the moon...”_

“Scott.” There’s a warning note on Argent’s voice and Liam’s head darts towards him.

Maybe it’s because of his aggressive roar, but Argent’s shotgun is at the height of his face now, incredibly close to his nose. Liam didn’t even realized he stepped so close to him.

But it’s when a hand closes roughly on his shoulder that Liam totally loses control and before he realizes it his claws slash the air where a second before there was Malia’s face. Mason keeps shouting his name, but Liam doesn’t feel like Liam now, he feels like a wolf and the wolf keeps rolling on the ground with the coyote trying to bite and scratch, until Scott’s roar makes the walls tremble. It’s just in front of the red eyes of his alpha that his fangs disappear into his gums.

Everyone is looking at him and Liam stays on the floor, panting breathless.

Then Deaton raises his phone.

“It’s Melissa. We know where they are.”

 

 

 

They could have guessed by themselves, honestly. It’s _always_ the sewers, and if it’s not the sewers it’s the school and if it’s not the school is the hospital and that’s it, god forbid the villains of Beacon Hills buy a map of the city and look for some of the other tons of places adequate for kidnappings and attempted murders.

Liam doesn’t know why he’s so bothered by the fact that the hunters brought Theo into the underground tunnels of the city and not somewhere else, but it’s not something new for him, irritation without a reason, and right now it’s not like there’s something in the world that _doesn’t_ bother him. Argent’s car right in front of their for example, when Liam would like to be the first of the line. Parrish’s car behind them, because Liam would like to be the one to close the line. And the Sheriff’s car on which he’s on right now, because it has the siren off and this bothers Liam more than anything: fine, they can’t signal their position to the hunters arriving with the sirens on, it makes sense, but at the same time it’s wrong that the siren stays off like it was saying _no emergencies in sight_ , when _emergency_ is the only thing his head keeps repeating.

“Liam.” The Sheriff scolds at him with a reprimand look and Liam retracts his hand away from the little red lever, pouting. Liam knows why in the disposition of cars decided by the others he ended up with the Sheriff: after he made the hunter speak so fast he’s the one among everyone who can inspire him less homicidal instincts. Which doesn’t mean he doesn’t inspire them at all tough. _The sun, the moon..._

 

 

 

Mason guesses it’s a good thing werewolves heals so quick, because Scott is surely about to break his neck by darting it back to check on the car behind them.

“Scott, he won’t attack the Sheriff” Mason says and he would be a little more credible if in the front seats weren’t sitting Argent and Malia, both attacked by Liam just a few minutes before. Malia’s sceptic snort speaks for itself.

Scott sighs, turning back again and throwing a worried look at Mason.

“Since when he got worse again?”

“He didn’t get worse actually” Mason reflects, because the truth is that Liam has actually got better in the last weeks. Mason can’t even remember the last serious attack he had before the current one. “It’s just tonight.”

“Yeah, I know he’s angry for the ambush now, of course, but why isn’t he able to control it? It seems like at the very beginning, right after I bit him. When I left he didn’t have so much trouble anymore in controlling his anger” Scott insists, something very similar to guilt on his face. Mason is often happy of not being a werewolf, but right now he’s particularly happy he’s not an alpha. “I haven’t seen him like this even when the Ghost Riders took Hayden.”

Mason doesn’t know how Liam was when the Ghost Riders took Hayden, because at that point Mason had already been taken as well. The only ones left in Beacon Hills with Liam, at the end, were the original members of Scott’s pack and...Theo.

“No, I mean, it’s literally just this time” Mason continues thoughtful. “He didn’t get worse, in fact he hadn’t any problem since you left. It’s just now.”

Scott frowns, clearly disoriented. Mason feels lost the same way and the silence fills the car for awhile.

Except that Mason remembers now when was Liam’s last attack: the Anukite was playing with the emotions and primordial instincts of everyone in the city and Liam told him almost ashamed of how close was he kill Noland and Gabe, first at the old zoo and then in the Lacrosse locker rooms.

And both times he didn’t in the end. And both times there was someone else with him.

Mason raises his head, the inspiration hitting him. “It’s because he doesn’t have his anchor.”

“He still didn’t find an anchor?” Scott looks perplexed. “Wasn’t it that buddhist mantra?”

“He _has_ an anchor. It’s just that it’s not here now.”

“And where is it?”

Mason glances at the road running fast in the night beyond the glass.

“We are going to save it right now.”

There are some seconds of silence and Scott keeps having a confused and a little stupid look, while Malia turns back, her eyes wide opened on Mason. “You’re kidding.”

“It’s ridiculous, I know, but it’s true. It’s the only explanation.” Mason shrugs, because his boyfriend can turn invisible and his best friend has fangs, so he’s used to absurd revelations. “Theo is his anchor.” Even Argent, who’s been silent the whole time with his eyes on the road pretending to be superior to their teenagers chats widens his eyes.

“Don’t tell him or he’ll try to eat you” he adds, because the fact that Mason figured it out doesn’t mean that Liam knows it as well.

 

 

 

There must be something wrong with Liam’s life if two heavily armed guys are a good sign, but that’s how it is. They’re at the entry of the tunnels and they’re living proof that the hunter didn’t lie and they’re in the right place. Liam would jump at them immediately because it’s since he woke up that he feels the need to hurt someone, but the others pointed out they don’t need to alert everyone even before entering and Liam couldn’t reply to that. Argent and the sheriff walked around to surprise them from behind and neutralize them before they can give the alarm and Liam is pissed they’re taking so damn long.

“Liam, it’s been thirty seconds” Corey whispers and Liam glares at him, because he’s angry at Corey. He just sat there the whole time in the car in the backseat and Liam just found out when they arrived, because he was invisible. _Why_ was he invisible? And why did he just turn invisible again?

“He won’t bite Corey, I promise” Mason says to the empty space at his side. “Stop looking at him like you want to kill him Liam.”

Liam can’t do that, because he _does_ want to kill everyone, so he glares at Mason as well and then he abruptly turns around to look at the tunnels, where the two hunters are on the ground. Argent steps in the entry with his gun ready while Parrish and the Sheriff handcuff the unconscious hunters. Liam doesn’t see that as _neutralize_ and he’d like to point that out, but Scott suddenly peeps out from the bushes. It’s time.

“So, are we actually going to do this?” Malia stands up as well, but just to grab Scott’s wrist. “Give them exactly what they want, _you_ , to save Theo? Fricking Theo?”

Scott throws her an exasperated look. “Malia...”

“He’s not even part of the pack!”

Liam stands up too, golden eyes glowing in the dark.

“He’s part of mine.”

Liam is not an alpha, he doesn’t have his own pack and he has no idea what he means with what he just said, but his gaze challenges Malia to question his words. That and the way he’s growling, and his bared trembling claws and in general the fact that he’s going to be at her throat in two seconds because he really needs to attack someone now.

“Anyway, they already went inside without you” Mason says and in fact there’s no trace left of Argent or the Sheriff or Parrish.

“Shit” Liam says and then he, Scott and Malia are running towards the tunnels.

 

 

 

Liam thought in the moment he'd have started to make hunters fly to one side from the other of the tunnels, roaring and clawing and throwing them against the walls, the anger would have eased a little, giving him truce.

Liam thought wrong.

There was some plan to respect, he believes, a formation, something about not going too far away from each other and not running alone through dark tunnels, but that plan went to shit in the same moment Liam started fighting and the rage just grew. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s surrounded by people trying to kill him or just that _he can’t find him_ , but he’s totally out of himself.

Scott’s roar reaches his ears from far away and he’s not sure if he’s trying to call him or what, and that’s a very not beta thing from him, and he keeps running in the opposite direction, through an apparent empty tunnel, until he has a hunter in front of him once again and in a second the rifle is in his hands and then against the man’s face, again and again, and then the man is flying against another hunter. Liam runs again and roars loud and it’s a call and it makes him crazy that it’s Scott the one answering, again, and then Malia, everyone except the one he wants. There's no sign of Theo and of Liam remains nothing but anger.

 

 

 

In front of them gunshots, screams, roars and explosions reverberating through the galleries, behind them the quiet sounds of the woods, the crickets and their breathing.

“Don’t you feel a little useless staying here just waiting while they fight?” Mason asks, crouched on the grass with his hand in Corey’s. It’s for safety reason, so he’s invisible too, but it makes the situation even more ridiculous, like they were there hand in hand doing a picnic and listening to the others risking their life.

“No. If I was inside I’d still be invisible and plastered against a wall” Corey shrugs, because he’s always been very honest about his basic cowardice and Mason respects that. “Do you feel useless?”

“A little.”

“You’re human, you couldn’t do much anyway.”

“Well, the Sheriff is human too.”

“Yes, but he’s trained.” Corey looks at him curious. “Do you want to train as well? So you can help?”

“What? No!” Mason throws him a scandalized look. “I would never want to go inside there, I'm not stupid. Just, I feel useless sitting right here. I think I’d like to be even _farther,_ so I’d feel less useless, you know? If I was home for example, on the couch, and not right here, I wouldn’t feel useless. Because I’d be far away and my being useless in this situation wouldn’t be so evident.”

Corey keeps staring at him in silence like he does when he doesn’t think Mason’s words have sense and Mason is already thinking to a way to explain it to him, something like the firemen saving kittens from fires, yes, kittens are perfect: Mason loves watching those videos of firemen and kittens on youtube, from his couch, but he wouldn’t like to be in front of a burning house and be the one filming the firemen and the kittens, because then he’d feel useless and... “What was that?” “Shhh!”

There's something moving in the wood behind them.

It’s dark like the night and the eyes are the only thing standing out in the dark, but when the wolf step dangerously close to the three they’re leaning against, Mason has never been happier of his invisible boyfriend. Then the wolf shifts and Mason’s jaw hits the ground.

He stands there, completely naked and touched only by the moonlight and he’s clearly trying to break into the Sherriff’s car.

“ _Theo?!”_

The claws are out in a second while he turns towards them, but when he sees them he retracts them confused.

“Mason? What are you guys doing here?”

“Us? What are _you_ doing here!”

Theo shrugs and he’s still naked, Mason can’t help but notice. Corey is not looking in Theo’s eyes, Mason can’t help but notice that too.

“Nothing, I was in the woods and I heard car’s noise, so I came to see if I could steal one instead of going back on four legs. I’m a bit tired.”

Theo is a bit tired and he’s standing there while the whole pack is risking their lives to save him and Mason doesn’t even knows what to say in front of this.

“Weren’t you captured?”

“I escaped” Theo says and his tone clearly adds _duh_ as he looks at Mason like he was stupid. “They handcuffed me but they didn’t know I can fully shift, my paws are thinner than my hands. Look, can you lend me your pants?”

Mason is still too incredulous to react, Corey on the other hand is already unbuttoning his jeans.

“What’s all this noise anyway?” Theo glances at the tunnels.

“Liam and the others.”

Theo frowns.

“And what are they doing?”

“They save you.”

Theo raises his brow.

“They save me?”

Theo blinks, looking at the entry of the tunnels and then down at himself.

Mason brings his hand to his hair. “Eh.”

“Embarrassing.”

Mason has nothing to object.

 

 

 

Scott, Malia, the Sheriff and even Argent, they’re all there fighting and Mason _said_ they were, but Theo is still surprised to see them. Not as much as each one of them is surprised to see him, of course, every time they bump into him their faces are something very funny for Theo, Theo who still keeps being incredibly disoriented by seeing them there, in flesh and bone, for him.

It’s in those tunnels that Tara dragged him underground months before, it’s there that no one saved him that time, because who the hell should have when Theo killed his own pack and dismantled theirs, and now they’re all there to save him. Technically it’s Theo the one there to save them now, but they were there to save him, and it’s ridiculous because Theo never needed saving in the first place, but he still feels something warm and confusing in his chest.

The other thing he hears, and that only him seems to notice in the frenzy of the fight, are Liam’s angry roars in the distance, resounding through the tunnels. What the hell that kid has to be so angry about or what the hell he needs to do all alone on the other side of the underground Beacon Hills, Theo has no idea.

 

 

 

 _Anger makes you stupid,_ his stepfather always repeats that to him.

Hearing someone calling you stupid when you’re already angry, on the other hand, makes you even angrier, this seems to slip to his stepfather. Another thing that makes you angrier when you’re angry is to be wrong and this is why Liam is blinded by anger now, because his stepfather was right and he has been stupid and this is why he’s stuck on the ground with three rifles pointed at him now.

The problem aren’t the rifles in itself, because Liam would stand up and throw himself at them with his fangs and claws ready like he did until now, the problem is what one of the three hunters threw at him, the dark dust line parting the three from Liam and keeping him from reaching them, even if they’re so close, while it doesn’t keep the bullets from reaching him.

 _Anger makes you stupid_ , his stepfather always says, and Liam is very angry now, so he throws himself violently against the invisible barrier, roaring and trying to get to the hunters, while they laugh mocking watching him being roughly pushed back on the ground, not one, not two, but three times, because Liam is stupid just like that. He knows he’s being stupid, he sees that and this makes him even angrier, because he can’t stop doing it, even if he’s hurting himself, every part of him keeps shoving him against the barrier that keeps pushing him back, until the hunters get bored of the game and before he can stand up again he hears the noise of a loaded rifle and when he raises his gaze he finds it pointed right at his head.

Liam is about to die and this makes him angry almost like the fact that the Sheriff didn’t let him turn the siren on.

 

 

 

“Malia, did you see Liam?”

“I think he went looking for Theo!”

“And Theo? He was there a second ago!”

“I think he went looking for Liam!”

Between a shot of bullets and the other, Scott starts thinking Mason was right.

 

***

 

 

Liam has no intention of dying with his ass on the ground and so he stands on his feet and darts towards the hunter holding the rifle between his eyes. His finger is on the trigger and Liam knows it’s a matter of seconds before everything is over. Except that while the barrier shoves him back on his ass, the hunter in front of him flies as well in the opposite direction, against the wall. Liam feels extremely satisfied by that and also proud of himself for a second, because he’s convinced he did it, even with the supernatural barrier and everything, but then the others hunters are on the ground as well and after all it wasn’t Liam.

Theo, against every logic, is standing there in front of him, golden eyes and white fangs, and it’s the first time in hours that the anger leaves place for something else. _Relief._

“What the hell are you doing?” he snaps a second later, irritated again.

He can’t believe his eyes, not even in a situation like this Theo can do what expected from him and let himself be found like a victim of kidnapping should, tied somewhere waiting for help.

“I save you” Theo shrugs and Liam darts on his feet, indignant.

“No, _I_ save you” he clears immediately, because it’s what he’s been trying to do for the whole night and there’s no way Theo just pops out of nowhere and turns the tables.

Theo’s eyes weigh critically Liam first and then the line of dark dust on the ground trapping him in those five feet, and then Liam again. “Well, you’re not very good.”

Liam’s ass hits painfully the ground for the umpteenth time, because that stupid barrier just stopped him from head butting Theo. 

“Free me” he orders pouting.

“Me? You’re the one saving me.” Theo smiles smug and Liam lowers his eyelids, incubating hate in silence.

He also incubates questions and those out loud.

“What are you wearing?”

“Corey’s pants” Theo says lowering his eyes on the only piece of clothing he’s wearing, a pair of washed out jeans and clearly too tight. “They don’t fit.”

As to prove it, he tries to link the two hems of fabric with the button and the buttonhole above the half unfastened zip, and not even werewolf strength can connect them. Liam stares at Theo’s hands and Theo’s waist and Theo’s naked skin for several seconds, silent, before coming to the conclusion that yes, they don’t fit.

Corey has always been skinny.

“I think I terrorized Corey” he announces and Theo frowns. “Free me now” he adds then, because the invisible barrier has become for some reason even more frustrating now that Theo is in front of him.

Theo, being the bastard he is, stares at him in silence a little longer, clearly enjoying his power, then he steps closer, the edge of his shoe slithering on the ground and wiping out the dust, breaking the perfect line. Immediately Liam’s invisible prison disappears.

“Here” Theo says, the ghost of a grin on his lips. “It’s a luck that I was here to save you, Liam.”

It’s when Liam feels the need to growl and he doesn’t hear the familiar sound of his wolf growl reaching his ears that he realizes he’s not shifted anymore. His nails are the nails of a sixteen years old boy and not the claws of the monster and the same goes for his teeth. Most of all, his irritation is human and manageable and not the blind rage of the wolf.

Liam never feels that coming, but now he didn’t feel it leaving as well.

It just slipped from him, suddenly, and even if Liam didn’t catch the exact moment in which it happened, he knows it wasn’t in any moment _before_   Theo’s apparition, because when he has Theo in his sight he never feels like killing people.

He often feels like hitting him on the nose, or on the mouth, to shut him up, or hitting him with words and nothing else, because Theo _knows_ how to get under his skin, but Liam is not angry anymore now and so he doesn’t have excuses to be stupid, and if being stupid is not an option anymore, denying Theo is the one that calmed him is not an option either. That it’s Theo to calm him, every single time.

And the point is, Theo doesn’t have this ingenious method to calm Liam, his own clever and thoughtful tactics, sometimes he punches him, sometimes he makes evil comments, other times he throws himself in detailed fantasy of bodies to dismember and bury and some other times he just keeps repeating his name, and there’s no actual scheme or a common factor that can be identified as the calming element, because sometimes Theo is just there and the point is not what Theo says or does, the point is, against every logic, Theo himself.

“Theo.”

“Yes?”

“I think you’re my anchor.”

Theo widens his eyes and Liam as well, because he didn’t plan to say it.

And then he panics and does the first thing he can think of to distract him from what he just said.

 

 

 

Liam just told him that he’s his anchor and then he punched him on the nose and Theo is _so_ confused now.

What confuses him even more is that Liam thinks he didn’t know already.

 

 

 


	13. Back Home (still no sex)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liam swears he didn't look.

 

 

“Just to be clear, breaking my nose is not a good way to thank me for saving your life” Theo says, wiping the blood from his face with the back of his hand.

“Whatever” Liam snorts because thanking Theo is the last of his thoughts, when everything going wrong in his life is actually his fault. If only he didn’t park in front of his house that night, if only he didn’t somehow become his anchor, if only he knew how to ride a bike, if only he properly buttoned those damn jeans.

“Look, take my pants” He blurts annoyed, unzipping them. “You can’t walk around like that.”

Liam, now in boxer, hands him his pants, which are actually Mason’s pants, since Liam didn’t walk out of his house wearing pants that evening. Theo, apparently completely unbothered by being totally indecent with those jeans covering barely what they need to cover, leaving too much bare skin under his belly button, stares at the jeans in Liam’s hands and then at Liam for several seconds, before shrugging.

“Okay” he says and then he quickly lowers his jeans, remaining absolutely naked in front of Liam.

 

 

 

When Scott finally finds his beta, after the battle is over, he also finds that Theo found him before him and the two are now standing in front of each other at the end of a gallery, Liam in his underwear and Theo completely naked.

Scott can’t wait to go back to college.

 

 

 

“Oh my god, _Theo”_ Liam, that didn’t look and he’ll say that until his last day, even if he couldn’t help but see, turns around abruptly, an annoying heat tickling his ears. “Can’t you at least _pretend_ a bit of decency?”

“What, did you expect me to wear them on top of these?” Theo chuckles, grabbing the jeans that fly violently against his chest.

“No, I expected you to turn around” Liam specifies and he doesn’t even know why he still keeps expecting normal behaviours from Theo.

“Why? If you want to see my ass you just have to ask.”

Theo closes his zip and Liam turns to look at him indignant by the insinuation, only to be hit by Corey’s pant right in his face.

“What are you doing still in your underwear Liam? Can’t you at least _pretend_ a bit of decency?” Theo mocks him giggling and Liam is just about to punch his nose, since he can’t form clever answers with his brain still partially collapsed on itself. Why his brain decided to collapse in front of a naked Theo and not when they crashed against a three or when the hunters shot them is just the umpteenth demonstration of how something went wrong in Liam’s life.

Theo still has a smile on his lips and even in the dark of the gallery Liam recognizes it like the weird smile he saw while he was pedalling in the night a few hours before, without his usual smug expression that makes every smile looks like a grimace. He’s pretty when he smiles like this, like a kid, like if he was happy, and this is just the last of a long list of things Liam doesn’t want to think about.

Then Scott loudly clears his voice and Liam remembers he’s still in his underwear.

 

 

 

The last time he and Theo has been in a police car together they were stealing it and this makes Liam somehow uncomfortable. They were also followed by an horde of Ghost Riders and now that he knows his actual driving abilities with any kind of vehicle, or lack of them actually, Liam is starting to think Theo didn’t even did it on purpose when he ran over one of them that time. This is why he looked so surprised right after. Maybe it was the same at the hospital and all the other times Theo helped him in those first days after Liam broke the sword, maybe it was always his incompetence at life to accidentally push him on the way of redemption. He probably noticed he closed himself at the wrong side of the elevator a second too late and in order not to lose his dignity he simply had to actually play the hero. It’s something Liam can imagine very well, because Theo is exactly the kind of person who’d dramatically run in the arms of death after an heroic line just to not admit he closed himself out of the elevator by mistake. Liam, on the other hand, is not that kind of person: he’d run back into the elevator and he’d press the button to close the doors, and then it would all be embarrassing and shit, but at least he’d be alive. Not that Liam would ever have to take such a decision, since Liam doesn’t crash everything he drives and he doesn’t trap himself to the wrong side of elevators.

Theo is staring at him confused now because Liam, on the other hand, is the type of person that starts looking morbidly at people with suspicious eyes for five minutes without saying a word.

The Sheriff keeps driving silent as well, maybe because it’s still too vivid in his mind the memory of how Theo did everything and beyond to frame Stiles for Donovan’s murder, or maybe just because it’s five in the morning.

Theo clearly remembers it very well, because it’s since they entered the car he hasn’t said anything and there’s no way he didn’t have any sarcastic observation to do for the whole journey. Liam wonders why he came with him and the Sheriff if he’s uncomfortable with what he did to him. Well, Theo did something to literally everyone there to be fair, because honestly, after months Liam still didn’t figured what exactly was his plan besides throwing attempts and manipulations in every direction hoping to be successful, but if he was in his shoes Liam would have probably chose Parrish and not the Sheriff. Parrish is Switzerland, Liam always thought that: Parrish just doesn’t care, he’d never waste times holding a grudge or something like that. Liam admires him a lot for that, he’d love to be able to alienate himself from the drama like him one day, but the truth is that if Liam was Parrish he’d still be throwing shade at Lydia for how she forgot about having a thing with him. Parrish instead just stays there, all chill, and even when he strips and catches fire he does it with total detachment.

Before knowing Parrish he had no idea, but catching fire with indifference is now Liam’s maximum aspiration in life. Because a person like this, that walks around naked and on fire and attacks enemies and sometimes friends, and then gets up and walks away, wouldn’t have problems to apologize after an IED episode. 

Liam is not Parrish and it’s because he spent the previous hour growling and jumping at his friends that he’s now in the car with the Sheriff and not with the rest of the pack: if he was with them he’d have to apologize. It’s not that Liam doesn’t _feel_ like he should apologizes, because he feels it actually, strong and clear like also the guilt, it’s just that he’d prefer not to do it right now. In a few days it’ll be a lot easier for future Liam, because he’ll apologize for past Liam’s behaviour while _not being_ him anymore, while now Liam would feel stupid to dissociate from himself.

Theo is staring at him again, frowning now, because Liam sometimes starts sighing dramatically when something bothers him. Liam returns the look to see if Theo plans to ask him something like _how are you?_ or _is everything okay?_ like someone should do at this point, but Theo stares at him in silence and then he makes a funny face and Liam turns the other way because he doesn’t find coherent to laugh while he’s in the middle of an existential crisis.

“Can I turn the siren on now?” he asks leaning forward and retracting himself abruptly when the Sheriff slaps his hand without moving his eyes from the road.

 

 

 

Deaton extracts the bullet from Malia’s shoulder in a few minutes and the healing process does the rest in a matter of seconds, making the permanence at the clinic a lot shorter than what Liam expected. The truth is that he thought he’d have to spend hours to Theo’s death bed watching Deaton barely saving him from terrible wounds, while Theo is there half naked and not even a scratch, because he escaped, he pulled out the bullets and he triggered  his healing process all by himself and Liam still feels incredibly annoyed when he thinks about it. Not that he’s not happy that Theo is fine, because the truth is that he can’t remember any other moment in his life when he felt so relieved as when he saw him appearing in the tunnels with his smug grin and his too tight jeans, and he can’t get out of his head how he felt when he roared in the middle of the battle and Theo didn’t answered. But that he did everything alone when half of the pack was there for him keeps bothering him irrationally.

“Malia...”

Maybe it’s the way his voice sound like the whine of a dying animal, because he _really_ doesn’t want to do it now, but the girl seems to have mercy on him.

“Oh, don’t even start, it’s all good” she stops him immediately, shaking her head. “I would have been the one kicking your ass anyway and we both know it.”

Liam doesn’t agree with the last affirmation, but he hides his protest in a sincere smile and he’s about to step closer to Corey, near the door, but Deaton intercepts him first.

“They were on the ground next to you when they found you” he explains handing him Theo’s shoes and a pile of clothes. They’re still damp under his touch and it’s just then that Liam realizes it was that night and  not a life ago, the pool. “There was also a bike.”

 

 

 

Theo is not the type of person who feels embarrassed or uncomfortable, in fact he’s not now, at all. It’s just that if he could get out of that room full of people he tried to kill –or, in Scott’s case, did kill- it’d be better, that’s all. He hasn’t seen Scott and Malia since the war against the hunters and he can only thanks his luck for being able to save himself before _they_ could do it, or else he wouldn’t have been able to move his eyes from the floor now. Not that he’s looking anyone in the face anyway, because his eyes are wandering from the ceiling to the window, but he still does it in a superior and bored way.

“Here, it’s the only dry thing.”

That until Liam throws his little red cape on his shoulder, immediately undermining every attempt at looking cool and dignified, or even just at keeping a low profile.

 _“Liam”_ he growls trying to take it off, but Liam grabs his hands to stop him.

“It’s the only dry thing” he insists like this was a sufficient reason to dress him like Little Red in front of everyone, as if Theo wasn’t more than happy to throw himself naked in the snow instead of this. His protests are vane because Liam is stubborn as usual and the only way to free himself from the ridiculous cape seems to bare his fangs, which doesn’t sound like a good idea when he’s surrounded by Liam’s pack –and even if he didn’t look at her, he knows perfectly well that Malia keeps glaring at him and she’s just waiting for an excuse. So eventually he stops wriggling and just stills furious as Liam laces the cape around his neck.

When he also pulls up the hood tough Theo tugs it down immediately and his eyes glows golden as he glares at Liam, who raises his hands in surrender.

 

 

 

“Do you guys need a ride?”

When everyone is outside the clinic, Scott turns to Liam, a vein of uncertainty in his voice.

Theo guesses it has to do with the fact that in the car with Scott there’s also Malia and the only way Malia would accept to give him a lift is if he was closed in the trunk.

“There’s space with us too if you want” Mason adds, probably thinking the same thing.

“It doesn’t matter, we have a bike” Liam says in the same moment in which Theo opens his mouth to happily accept the ride. He closes it immediately, throwing an annoyed look to Liam, because _it doesn’t matter we have a car_ is the last thing he’d like to hear at five in the morning after a kidnapping and a bloody battle, but oh well.

“I'm afraid it’s not in a good shape, guys” Deaton sighs, nodding at the rickety bike leaned against the wall of the clinic, and Theo is infinitely grate to him. Common sense, finally. “It didn’t survive the hunters’ ambush well.”

“It’s not because of the hunters, Theo crashed it against a three.” Liam absolutely _needed_ to say it apparently. “But it still works, it’s not a problem.”

Theo thinks _it is_ a problem, but he’s wearing a little girl cape and he feels like this somehow deprives him of credibility, so he accepts to turn his back to not one, but two comfortable and safe rides home to walk towards a stolen bike that will be able to work for not more than twenty feet before collapsing to the ground.

 

 

 

Scott observes Liam and Theo leaving at a snail’s pace on the squeaking bike, bickering, the red cape fluttering moved by the wind and the front wheel clearly deflated.

“So, his anchor” he sighs after awhile, thoughtful.

Mason, next to him, nods serious.

“Yep.”

Scott stopped asking himself how the hell that happened. Now he’d just like to know why Liam’s bike is pink and why Theo is wearing a Little Red cape on his shoulders.

 

 

 

Theo is back in hell, with Liam clinging to his cape, choking him and sawing his neck, the crooked handlebar that keeps sliding and the deflated wheels that makes pedalling hard as dragging a ton with just his legs muscles. When all of a sudden it starts raining, he uses the little breathe he has left to shout at full voice “ _I fucking told you!”_ even if he didn’t told him of course, but he _wanted_ to say it and it’s the same thing.

 

 

 

It’s not the same thing at all and Liam keeps screaming it with passion as the wind lashes his cheeks and shoots the rain straight into his eyes, blinding him, and what happens after doesn’t really surprise him.

 

 

 

This time they leave the bike, now definitely destroyed, on the ground at the feet of the three and they start running home, jumping from puddle to puddle and shoving each other under the thunders.

 

 

***

 

It’s weird how a warm shower can be so satisfying, when all Liam has been craving for half an hour is to _dry_. It’s a bizarre feature of human beings, now that he thinks about it, that when an unexpected bath happens, before drying they need to wet themselves even more to be happy and Liam would share his thoughts with Theo if it wasn’t for the fact that he’s too sleepy to talk.

The light is still on in the room because Theo just stepped out of the bathroom and Liam watches him lazily as he walks towards his mattress on the ground. Maybe they should buy him a real bed, he thinks absently, while the other kneels to grab Liam’s lacrosse hoodie.

Liam is not sure what clicks in his head at that point, because Theo has been wearing his hoodie at night for weeks now and he watched him putting it on several times without doing anything, but before he even decided to move a finger, Liam finds himself standing exactly behind Theo, his hand on his arm. Theo turns around surprised, because Liam was fast, and he keeps looking at him astonished and without protesting even when Liam grabs his hoodie and then proceeds to roughly throw it on the floor. Theo is so surprised he even forgets to raise his brow in his usual mocking way, he just stands there with lost eyes and parted lips, while Liam throws him a defiant look, challenging him to god knows what, before giving him his back and turning off the light, climbing back to bed.

 

 

 

Theo stills in the middle of the dark room without having an idea of what just happened or what he’s supposed to do now. It’s not something he’s used to, being surprised, because Theo is a champion at reading people and situations, but Liam as always escapes every logic, because if Theo is reasoning and detailed planning, anticipation and tricks, Liam is instinct and rashness, impulse in his wild state, and if Theo is the only one capable of bringing balance and calm back to Liam when he’s pray of his anger, Liam is on the other hand the only one able to drag Theo out of his network of caution and control, out of himself. And so instead of standing there thinking about what the red hoodie thrown harshly on the floor could mean, he stops thinking and he walks resolute towards Liam’s bed, because without machinations and premeditated moves this is what’s left: Theo walking firm towards Liam’s messy bed, towards his scent, his still damp hair, towards the regular beating of his heart pumping blood through his veins, under the warm skin. It’s Liam, it’s Liam what there’s left.

 

 

 

The mattress sinks a little on his side under Theo’s weight as he climbs under the blankets next to Liam, in the empty space that was already there, because Liam knew he would have came.

He didn’t know it in the way wise people know things, that way fruit of reasonings and empirical demonstrations, when in that way Liam has no idea what he’s been doing all evening to be honest, all his life actually. He knew it in the way he always knows the things about Theo, the way that makes it like he knows them and doesn’t know them at the same time, all senses and touches and breathings.

There isn’t a reason why Theo can’t sleep on his own mattress, with Liam’s hoodie under his nose to prevent his nightmares, except all the reasons in the world, reasons without a name but not less important because of that. Except that sensation of _interrupted_ Liam can’t remove from his skin since their bike crashed against a three the first time, suddenly removing Theo’s naked shoulder from his lips, his warm back from his chest and his hips from his arms.

It was a life ago but also just a second and when Liam turns on his side, facing the wall and giving Theo his back, and Theo waits only a few seconds before getting closer, moving his hand on his hip and placing it eventually under his arm, in front of his face, and Liam grabs it and places it under his cheek, like to trap it, and Theo gets even closer, hugging him tight against his warm chest, it’s juts then that Liam starts breathing again. Just then the rip recomposes.

And Liam doesn’t even need to force himself not to think this time, because Theo breathes softly next to him, warm and dry for the first time in hours, he smells of soap and clean and in Liam’s mind there’s no place for anything else.

 

 

 

Theo is in that paradisiacal state of drowsiness preceding the actual sleep that you remember just when it get abruptly interrupted and that’s the case.

“Fuck, Liam!” he whines in pain while Liam rolls on the other side again with his head on his arm as if he just didn’t suddenly bite his shoulder.

“I told you you’re my anchor and you didn’t answer, you’re a dickhead” he adds annoyed, while Theo feels the pain slowly vanishing as his skin regenerates.

“You told me you think I’m your anchor and then you punched me” he reminds him, because maybe Liam doesn’t know that people tend to distract from what you’re saying when you break their nose.

“Fuck you.”

Theo stays quiet, his ears focused on Liam’s heartbeat.

“And what did you want me to say anyway? It wasn’t a question.”

“Nothing. Shut up, I want to sleep.”

Theo doesn’t answer and hugs Liam a little tighter, raising his head a bit and bringing his nose against his ear, at the end of the lobe, there where it slowly becomes cheek. He inhales deeply as he descends towards the chin, barely brushing it, and then back on the neck, until Liam raises his head as well and turns towards him. He stares him seriously in the eyes, two inches from him, and Theo holds his gaze without moving a muscle.

“Stop sniffing me” he says after awhile and Theo can feel his breathing brushing his lips.

Then Liam gives him his back again and Theo wraps his arms around him, leaning his head on the pillow just next to Liam’s, his forehead against his neck and his finger intertwined with his.        

He closes his eyes and breaths slowly as the echo of the gunshots of that night vanishes from his ears and all that’s left is Liam’s scent.

Liam who’s so stupid to make him hold an amused snort: Theo is in his bed because he can’t sleep without his scent close, who the hell does he think his anchor is?

 

 


	14. Alpha

 

“Liam, sweetheart, you’re gonna be late for trainin-”

Liam slept just a few hours and he so doesn’t want to go to trainings, but it’s not like he ever wants to do things or in general live in the morning, so he forces himself to lift his eyelids and murmur an answer to his mother.

“Just a minute” he mumbles meeting his mum’s astonished eyes before closing his again and sinking his cheek back in the pillow, settling himself better in Theo’s sleepy hug. It’s not that beds are not already comfortable at night, when you get in, but there’s some magic that starts at the firsts hours in the morning that makes them ten times softer and warmer when you have to get up, not to talk about the enveloping heat of Theo’s arms making even more annoying the idea to leave it. It’s in prevision of these moment of maximum laziness that Liam accepted to share his role of captain with Nolan and immediately the idea of pretending to be sick and staying there against Theo’s warm body for a few more hours looks incredibly tempting.

With his eyes still close, he focuses on the way Theo’s regular breath caresses his ear for several seconds, then he suddenly remembers his mum’s taken aback gaze and the two things finally connect, making him sit abruptly.

His mother is still there, at the end of the bed, staring at them with her mouth opened.

Liam parts his lips as well, first in an involuntary reflex, in the silent horror scream his life requests, then in a theatrical grimace of surprise and indignation.

“What the hell?” Liam turns dramatically towards Theo’s still asleep figure, wriggling away from him and fixing his gaze on his mum again. “Did you _see_ what he did? He sneaked into my bed!”

 

 

Theo doesn’t know what Liam has to scream in his ears about first thing in the morning, but before he can even open his eyes and find out he feels two hands against his chest and a second later his back is on the cold floor. Fuck his life. Fuck his life so much.

 

 

Jenna lets a resigned sigh escape her mouth, while his son’s poor boyfriend whines on the floor and Liam goes on with his act.

“Liam” she stops him firm. “Apologize to Theo.”

Thousands of excuses immediately fill the air, but not one of them is of the kind needed.

“Liam” she insists irremovable.

Liam turns reluctantly towards Theo, mumbling between his teeth a very little heartfelt _sorry_.

“Now get ready or you’ll be late. Breakfast is on the table” Her voice softens a bit as she gives the boy still on the ground a smile. “Do you like pancakes, Theo?”

“I love them, Mrs Geyer, thank you.”

 

 

His mum closes the door behind her and Liam painfully abandons his bed, avoiding Theo’s body still on the floor. Theo who keeps staring at him all accusatory, even if his eyes are barely open and his face is all covered in pillow marks. He’s probably mad because of the _pushed you on the ground_ thing, which is ridiculous because that’s Liam’s bed and he’s allowed to push whoever he wants out of it. Theo would surely disagree because he, unlike him, is not a reasonable person and so Liam decides to prove his maturity by grabbing him, an arm under his knees and one behind his back, and placing him back on the bed. The mattress squeaks loudly, because it’s not incorrect to say Liam put him back on the bed, but it’s also not incorrect to say Liam _threw_ him. When Liam exits the bathroom, ten minutes later, and starts wearing his Lacrosse uniform, Theo is still staring at him, exactly where he left him, even if his legs are now under the blankets.

Liam ignores him and keeps getting ready, then he grabs his training bag and throws him and impatient look “What?”

Theo keeps staring intensely.

“You look like you have a dead skunk on your head.”

Liam stays quiet a few seconds to process the information, then he throws himself at Theo hitting him with his bag against the chest, violently, because not everyone can look like a model in the morning, with messy hair all nice and gifting a distract beauty look straight from a movie instead of a dead carcass look, someone needs to take the responsibility of living in the real world and holding dead skunks on his head in the morning and that someone is Liam. 

Theo defends himself and grabs the bag, starting some kind of tug of war that ends up with Liam back in the bed, immobilized in Theo’s warm grip. Liam would try to get free, he’d give him a tactic elbowed in the ribs, but it’s so early and he really can’t find the strength or motivation to resist a few seconds more in bed. Not to talk about that story of how every part of him feels at peace with the world when Theo’s body is pressed against his, but _that_ is the thing Liam decided not to think about.

It’s just how it is, the new turn his life took, loving the hugs of the weird guy that lives in his house, and there should not always be an explanation for everything.

“Don’t go” Theo whispers suddenly, his warm breath tickling Liam’s neck. “You suck at Lacrosse anyway.”

Liam feels a shiver run from the bare skin of his neck to his back, clearly because of Theo’s sacrilegious affirmation, since he’s _great_ at Lacrosse, thank you very much. Theo is the one who sucks, even if Liam never saw him playing, but he bets he does, because Theo can’t even ride a bike apparently. Or win apnoea contests without cheating. Without kissing him.

“I’m late” he says, suddenly eager to leave the bed. Theo eased his grip and before he can blink Liam has already sneaked out of his arms and out of the room too.

Theo lets his head falls back on the pillow and he keeps staring at the ceiling without thinking anything in particular, Liam’s scent surrounding him from every direction.

At the other side of the room his mattress lays unused.

 

 

***

 

Liam’s trainings end at half past noon.

At noon and thirty-five Theo’s phone starts ringing.

“Do you like sushi?” The voice at the other side of the phone says before Theo can open his mouth.

“Excuse me?”

“Do you like sushi?” Liam repeats impatient.

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know, _wait a second Mason, I’m asking him,_ you like it or not, it’s not hard.”

“I never tried it.”

“ _You never...”_ Theo can feel the indignation filling his voice and he’s sure he widened his eyes in the ridiculous way he does when the world doesn’t meet his expectations. “Guys, he never ate sushi. _I swear_. My God, Raeken, where did you leave until now?”

“With the Dread Do-”

“Rhetorical question.” Liam cleans his throat and he suddenly sounds uncomfortable. “So, do you want it or not?”

Theo is confused. “Do I want what?”

“Eat.” Liam says. “Sushi.” He adds after an useless pause. “With me, Mason and Corey. We’re going to eat sushi and Mason thought that maybe you’d like to come.”

Theo vaguely catches Mason’s voice in the background protesting something, but he’s too surprised by Liam’s question to think something about it. It doesn’t matter how many pauses he did and how robotic his voice sounded, Theo still perfectly recognized what just unexpectedly hit him in the face: an invitation. Theo is not used to be invited in places by people, not when there aren’t supernatural threats involved and it’s a weird feeling. Getting dressed, take his car and going out to meet people that are waiting for him, because they _want_ him to meet them, without a particular thing to do besides stay there together, it’s an absolute news. It’s not the first time Mason or Liam ask him if he wants to do something with them to be fair, it already happened a time or two, but always when they were home and Theo was home as well and it was most politeness than anything, since Theo was already _there_ , but now Theo is not there, he’s so far away from _there_ and Liam still called him, as if he actually wanted him there. Theo wants to be there too, and so he’s about to accept, when he suddenly remembers something.

“No” he says and then he hangs up.

 

 

Liam feels Mason’s and Corey’s perplexed gazes on him, but he can’t move his, indignant, from his phone. He can’t believe what just happened.

“He said no” he informs incredulous the others. Seconds go by and from Mason and Corey still not the scandalized sounds he expected, so he finally raises his eyes.

They’re looking at him questioning.

“And...?” Mason says after awhile.

“ _And?”_ Liam doesn’t understand. Theo had the nerve to say _no_ and this should be enough to wipe out those chill expressions from the faces of his friends, but apparently not. “He said _he won’t come_ ” he specifies, in case they didn’t understand.

“Okay” Mason shrugs. “So go shower and then we’ll go without him.”

Liam doesn’t want to go shower.

Well, he _wants_ , because he sweated and he smells and all his team mates already reached the locker rooms, but he doesn’t want to do it now, leaving the matter at that. There’s something bothering him in Mason’s and Corey’s lack of reaction, like nothing striking happened.   

It’s not acceptable that Theo just said _no_ , not after everything he did, not after he literally killed Scott. Liam has no idea what Scott’s murder has to do with going to sushi with him or not, but his mind is all an indignant vortex of thoughts now and the annoyed feeling in his chest makes impossible to put them in a logical sequence. The only thing he knows is that Theo’s arms were warm around him that night and now he hang up on him and Liam will never invite him anywhere ever again.

 

 

“I think he doesn’t have enough money.”

Liam, freshly showered and with his bag on his shoulders, throws Mason a questioning look.

“What?”

“Theo” he specifies walking towards the exit of the stadium. “He lives at your place because the alternative was his car. I don’t think he has money to go out.”

Liam stops, blinking.

He didn’t think about that.

It’s not weird that he didn’t do it, when not thinking is something he’s so good at. And it’s not weird that Mason thought about it instead, because he’s exactly the type of person that thinks before acting out of instinct and holding eternal grudges.

“Liam?”

Mason and Corey, a few feet ahead, look at him perplexed.

“I’m thinking” he informs them.

 

 

Liam’s name flashes once again on his screen and Theo slips his finger towards the green icon, bringing it to his ear. He doesn’t say anything and a ridiculous enough number of seconds goes by before Liam breaks the silence.  

“Do you plan to say something or...?”

Theo clears his throat. “Yes?”

“I’m Liam.”  
“No shit.”

“Shut up” he replies immediately. “Look, can you do me a favour?”

“What?”

“There’s a black backpack under my desk” Liam continues hasty. Theo’s eyes automatically run to it, spotting the backpack slumped on the floor. “Can you bring it to me? We’re at the sushi next to the school.”

Theo lifts the backpack from the floor, finding it unusually light.

“What do you need an empty backpack for?”

“It’s not empty” Liam immediately contradicts him. “Don’t open it. There are important papers inside. Things that don’t concern you.”

Theo raises his brow. “You need to deliver important papers to the sushi waiters?”

“To Mason and Corey. We have to consult on...things. Oh look, can’t you just do me a favour for once? I’ll buy you lunch in exchange.”

“I don’t want you to buy me lunch.”

Before Liam can reply, Theo already hanged up on him again.

 

 

Theo is not a delivery man and if getting his backpack is so important to Liam, then Liam can sure as hell skip his sushi lunch and come back home and grab it himself.

It’s a very simple and clear thought in Theo’s head, made vaguely useless by the fact that his truck just stopped in the parking lot in front of the sushi. Sighing he grabs the backpack from the passenger seat and he gets out of the car, spotting Liam and the others before he even crosses the street, at the table closer to the large window. As soon as the door opens ringing, Liam’s eyes are on him.

 

 

Theo throws his backpack on his lap without ceremonies and he immediately fixes his eyes on his face with a raised brow. “Well? Didn’t you have to _urgently_ show Mason and Corey your important papers?”

Liam clears his throat, lowering his eyes on the clearly empty bag on his lap.

“Yes, as a matter of fact I have to” he says eventually, moving it on the table and nodding for Corey and Mason to come closer. They curiously lean on the backpack and Liam starts to slowly unzip it, keeping the upper edge of the fabric raised so that Theo, on the other side of the table, can’t see its content.

An half empty pack of tissues and a mint by the way.

 

 

Theo opened the backpack in the exact moment Liam, on the phone, told him not to open it and now he stares with his raise brow Liam, Corey and Mason all gathered around what he perfectly knows being an empty bag. That kid is so stupid.

 

 

“Okay, so” Liam clears his throat for the second times in ten seconds. “Did you guys see everything, yes?”

“Yes” Mason nods, the confusion clear in his eyes. Corey thinks he’s crazy, he can see that.

Liam can’t blame him, because he _feels_ crazy.

“Good. Emergency over” he concludes, relieved he can finally close the backpack and hide it under his chair. Then he turns to Theo. “Thanks. You can sit now.”

Theo frowns. “Excuse me?”

“I told you I’d buy you lunch if you brought me my backpack.”

“And I told you no.”

Liam shrugs. “Whatever, you’re here now.”

“It doesn’t mean I have to stay here” Theo replies and Liam rolls his eyes, impatient. Why does he always need to make everything difficult?

 

 

Theo delivered the empty bag, he refused to have his lunch paid and now there’s nothing left for him to do there, so he performs in a last smug expression and then he gives his back to the table. He’s able to do just one step before he stops.

He turns back slowly and he rests his eyes on Liam’s fingers closed around his hand for just a second, before looking at him astonished.

“Can you _please_ just sit down?” Liam asks and he keeps holding his hand, firm but delicate at the same time.

Theo swallows and for once he doesn’t have any sarcastic comeback on his tongue, so he just sits, slipping his hand from Liam’s and taking the seat next to Corey, his gaze fixed on the table.

The embarrassed silence lasts almost five seconds, then Liam smiles enthusiast and he starts making noise to catch the waiter’s attention.

 

 

Liam orders for him as well without consulting him in any way and Theo doesn’t feel like protesting, since the menu could be written in ancient Greek for what he can understands. He didn’t expect sushi to be this complicate, with all those little eggs and seaweeds of weird colours and names, all things Liam seems to know like his pockets instead. His satisfied air vanishes immediately tough when Theo, copying Mason and Corey, grabs his chopsticks and uses them to bring an uramaki to his lips. Or an osomaki. Theo is not sure, but the point is that he’s able to lift it with his chopsticks even if he doesn’t know its name, which is more than what can be said about Liam: he didn’t even touched his chopsticks.

“Why don’t you use your chopsticks, Li?” He asks with a smug grin, already imagining the answer. His smirk vanishes in the exact second he stops talking and realizes how he just called him. He never did it before and he didn’t decide of doing it now, and he immediately expects to become the target of perplex gazes, but Liam doesn’t even blink, shrugging.

“I prefer the fork.”

“He doesn’t know how to use them and everytime he lets something fall he gets so annoyed he accidentally breaks them” Mason immediately corrects him and Theo chuckles. Liam seems very offended by his best friend’s betrayal, but Corey joins Theo in his giggling and when after some seconds Mason does the same Theo has to force himself to hold a surprise look. He’s not used to it, not mocking Liam, that is basically what he does for most of the time, but mocking him with someone else, laugh with someone else, as if Theo was actually part of something –the word _pack_ is not correct and Theo doesn’t even dare thinking it, but it’s the one that comes closer – warms something in his chest.

 

 

That he’s not part of the pack or the group or anything else in general, he remembers it when Liam, Corey and Mason’s phone start ringing and buzzing all at the same time. His stays quiet.  

“Oh” Liam smiles, surprise and enthusiasm clear on his face as he looks at the screen of his phone.

“We’re going, yes?” Mason asks immediately, just as happy.

“Of course we’re going!” Liam finishes his coke glass in a sip and in a blink of an eye the bill has been paid and the door of the restaurant giggles loudly closing behind them.  

Theo blinks, alone at the table.

He’s not bothered by this, he starts repeating himself mentally. He’s just been abandoned in three seconds and without as much as a bye, as if he was invisible, in a place he didn’t want to come in in the first place, but _he’s not_ bothered. He couldn’t care less actually.

Theo is everything but bothered and as soon as the indignation will let him move and go back home, he’ll grab his few belongings and he’ll leave Beacon Hills for good, even better, he’ll leave the state and nobody will ever hear a word from him, especially Liam, but _he’s not_ bothered.

Theo is so bothered that he could maul the waitress and he’s _in fact_ about to maul the waitress when a familiar horn catches his attention.

The sound comes from his truck, parked at the other side of the road exactly where he left it, except that now it’s full. Liam shouts something from the passenger seat, keeping hitting his palm on the horn, while Mason and Corey also call him from the backseats.

Theo immediately brings his hand to his jacket pocket, where he always keeps his car keys, only to find it empty. _Fucking asshole._

“About time! What were you waiting for, dinner as well?”

“Maybe he wanted to get hired.”

“And you didn’t even want to come to the sushi, you almost grew roots.”

As Theo opens the door, everyone has something to say. He does too.

“What the hell are you all doing in my car?”

“We’re going to the pool” Liam says as if this explains everything.

It doesn’t.

“Did you confused me with a taxi?”

“Of course not” Liam rolls his eyes. “Taxi drivers are polite. And with _we’re going_ I mean _we’re going_ , as in all the people in the car, not all the people in the car except you, you idiot.”

“Is that so?” Theo immediately replies polemical, the tone of who’s about to add something very sharp and biting. He has that tone because he _intends_ adding something, but his brain is too busy processing the information to also elaborate an answer: with _we’re going_ Liam means a _we’re going_ that also comprehends Theo.

 

 

Liam waits for Theo to finish his sentence for almost a minute, preparing so many comebacks in his mind. _Your face too!_ Is his favourite, but he’s ready to vary basing on what Theo’s answer will be –something glorious surely, since he’s taking so long.

“Do I turn left here?” It’s everything Theo says and he has started the car for awhile, Liam only now notices it.

“Turn right, we need to stop home to grab some swimsuits.”

 

 

***

 

Theo has two little moles, right next to each other, on his left pectoral.

Liam never noticed it.

There’s nothing weird about it, since Liam doesn’t spend his time staring at Theo’s chest. Not because it’s an ugly chest, it’s not of course, it’s ridiculously the contrary of an ugly chest, it’s actually unbelievable how perfect it is, that’s what it is, as if the greatest sculptor took his time with a stonecutter to model it following all the right mathematical proportions, from built pectorals to defined abdominals to the border of the blue swimsuit, a sculpture of tanned skin, warm and smooth – not that Liam is touching it and can know it for sure, but Theo’s skin is always warm, just as it was warm his chest against his back that night and morning too, before he shoved him on the floor.

“Liam? What are you thinking about?”

Mason throws him a questioning look and Liam immediately runs towards the exit of the changing rooms.

“Nothing, let’s go.”

Sure as hell he wasn’t thinking that Theo has been sculpted by the greatest sculptor, that would be a terribly embarrassing thing to think, besides the fact that it would start an infinite diatribe between all the maximum art historians because of the impossibility to determine the greatest sculptor of all time and... Liam is for some reason incredibly satisfied by those two little moles on Theo’s chest. They give a touch of _true_ in the middle of all that perfection.

 

 

As soon as they exit the changing rooms, Liam spots a strawberry blonde tangle of hair darting towards them.  

Theo is right behind him and just as Lydia’s voice enthusiastically greeting Mason and Corey reaches them too, Liam stops hearing the footsteps behind him.

“Scott texted the others about yesterday ambush” Liam starts vaguely guilty, turning back and finding him still like he expected. “He told them everything is okay and he’ll leave again in a few days, but since he and Malia were already here and we’re never able to reunite all the pack at once...”

Theo already understood, it’s clear by the disbelief in his eyes, and Liam doubts for a second the geniality of his idea of bringing Theo to the pack reunion without him –or _them_ , for what matters- knew it. By the betrayal in Theo’s eyes, it doesn’t look like he did the right thing at all, but on the other hand if he left him home and came by himself he wouldn’t have felt good either. As always, Liam just can’t win.

When Theo turns back ready to go back to the changing rooms and disappear before anyone sees him tough, Liam has no doubts that letting him escape is _not_ the right thing, so he stops him grabbing his arm.

“Hey, don’t run!”

“I’m not _running_ , I’m leaving.”

“Well, don’t leave.”

Theo totally looks like he’s about to leave, but before he can do anything Lydia’s voice freezes them both.

“Liam?”

 

 

When Lydia figured everything out before the others and confronted him in the library, Theo hit her so hard she fainted.

He dragged her to the Nemeton and left her there, catatonic, to freeze in the woods.

He pushed his Kanima venom soaked claws in Scott’s back until the alpha had to leave his grip on her hand, letting her falling in the void.

These are all things Theo did and he always knew he did, and it’s not the first time he sees Lydia since he came back from hell: they plotted and worked side to side sometimes during the hunters war, but now she’s there in her yellow swimsuit, in a peaceful day with no supernatural threats, at the pool with her friends and it’s different.

There’s nothing _forcing_ them to be in the same room now, except Liam’s fingers still closed on his forearm.

 

 

Lydia’s smile dies the seconds she sees Liam is not alone.

“Oh. Theo” she adds hesitant. “I didn’t know...”

“ _Theo?”_ After a few seconds Stiles enters Liam’s field of view, the bright red of his swimsuit in conflict with the pallor of his skin and the brown eyes wide in a disbelieving grimace. “Is this a thing now? A real thing that happens? The pack goes to the pool and Theo comes with us? _Theo?_ ”

“Yes, Stiles, it’s a real thing” Liam walks firm to accept Lydia’s hug, loosening his grip on Theo’s arm. There’s no way Theo will leave now, his pride would never allow him to escape after that the pack already noticed him.

Stiles grabs his hand and drags him against his shoulder in some kind of greeting, but Liam is well aware of his eyes still fixed on Theo, and mostly he’s aware of Theo slowly walking closer, his chin raised a little and the smug expression he always has before twirling the knife in someone’s wound. Maybe he’s about to ask Stiles if he had to use self defence again during his months away from Beacon Hills or some other thing that would immediately wipe out any chance of an afternoon dedicated to fun and peace and non violence, so Liam shoves his hand still connected to Stiles’ and makes him fall in the pool in a fountain of sprays.   

“Theo as in the one who tried to kill you all?” A quiet and vaguely bored voice asks from the other side of the pool. Liam raises his gaze and finds a blonde guy with blue eyes lying on a lounge chair next to Malia. He never saw him before.

“Not everyone” Mason adds, trying to help. Liam kinda loves him for that.

“The majority” Malia snorts brusquely. “But with Scott he succeeded it.”

“You died and you didn’t tell me, McCall?” Jackson, that Liam met right after the final battle against the Anukite, huffs glancing at Scott and then at Ethan, sitting next to him on the poolside. About them Liam just knows that Jackson has a tail and Ethan had a twin and now they’re together. “He doesn’t look dead to me.”

“You know who looks and is dead instead? His sis-”

Stiles’ head is suddenly underwater again and Derek meets Liam’s eyes, not moving his hands from Stiles’ shoulders, completely unbothered by his struggling.

“Hi Liam” he says what with could look like the ghost of a smile, as Stiles’ left hand scratches his wet forearm in the useless attempt to surface again.

“Derek” Liam nods at him with a smile. He likes Derek, even if he doesn’t have with him the same relationship everyone else in the original pack has. The first time he saw him he slammed him against a locker pretending to break his Lacrosse stick and Liam wanted to slash his throat, but he’s the one who thought him the mantra that was his anchor for almost a year, before...well, before Theo.

“Okay, what about we put the past behind for today and we enjoy the afternoon?” Lydia proposes with her shrill and a little authoritative voice. Liam kinda loves her too. “I didn’t fly six hours to dive in head first in Beacon Hills drama.”

Stiles looks like he’s about to reply something, but this time it’s Scott to stop him.

He just calls his name, without even flashing his alpha eyes, but it’s enough. Stiles closes his eyes with a sigh and then he quickly turns around, trying with no fortune to drown Derek, while he just stands there, indifferent to the other’s pushes.

The air is suddenly a lot lighter and Liam immediately feels stupid, standing there with his hands on his hips just staring. He’d like to join everyone’s laughs and chats, but the truth is that he feels like he can’t leave Theo’s side: the fact they accepted not to attack him explicitly doesn’t mean that someone beside him, Mason and Corey will actually talk to him.

Except that someone does and without wasting time.

Theo looks even more surprised than Liam while Jackson and Ethan almost force him to sit down with them. Liam would like to use his supernatural senses to hear what they’re saying, but Scott steps right in front of him, distracting him. “Hey.”

 

 

“I tried to kill them all as well, you know” Ethan shrugs and Theo is not sure this is a good way to bond with someone unless you’re trying to start a serial killer organisation or something. “Jackson too.”

“I wasn’t myself” Jackson immediately replies, bitter.

“He was a lizard” Ethan’s voice is confidential as he leans towards Theo, as if they weren’t in a room full of supernatural ears.

Theo doesn’t even try to hold the laugh that bursts spontaneous in his chest, while Jackson starts muttering insults and threats against his boyfriend, with such an aggression that Liam’s outbursts pale in comparison.

Ethan doesn’t look impressed. “He still has a tail.”

 

 

“Hey” Liam nods as well, before clearing his voice. “Thank you.”

Scott doesn’t ask him for what, just nodding with a sigh and glancing at Theo.

“You trust him” he says and Liam is not sure if it’s a question or not.

“Yes. I know you’ll never do, but-”

“He’s part of your pack.”

Liam blinks confused.

“What?”

“It’s what you told Malia last night. That he’s not part of my pack, but he’s part of yours.”

Liam vaguely remembers saying that, in the inaccurate bleary way he always remembers the things he does during his episodes. “But I’m not an alpha” he murmurs unsure. “I can’t have a pack.”

Instead of replying, Scott nods in the direction of the blond guy on the lounge chair.

“Isaac was my first beta.”

Isaac. Liam already heard that name and he immediately brings his eyes to study the delicate features of the guy. He knows a few things about him, he knows he lived for awhile with Scott and he was like a son for Melissa. He knows that at some point he left with Chris Argent, suddenly, and that he’s been living in France since then. Liam thinks his departure has something to do with the thing no one talks about, the girl that died and who’s the reason all his informations about the past of the pack are fragmentary and inaccurate, the reason why nobody ever told him everything since the start.

But he remembers something else about Isaac.

“Wait” he frowns. “Your beta? Wasn’t Derek the one who bit him?”

“Exactly”  Scott alludes a smile, staring him in the eyes. “I didn’t bite him, I wasn’t even an alpha at the time, but Isaac was my first beta anyway. I wasn’t an alpha, but I was _his_ alpha.”

Liam is not sure he’s understanding what Scott is trying to tell him, but his eyes automatically find Theo, who’s laughing happily next to Ethan. _His alpha._

It still doesn’t make actual sense, because Scott is the true alpha and so he’s the supreme exception and not the rule, but Theo _is_ part of his pack, whether it makes sense or not, and it’s not like Liam ever cared about rules anyway. 

 


	15. Pack (ops we did it again)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yesterday night after coming home after a tragic defeat in the town Risk tournament (yep, I live in a place where Risk tournaments are a thing, several little tables of fighting people on the streets) I couldn't sleep and I translated everything until chapter 19 because I'm so fast apparently. So yeah, just two chapters to go and I'm done. I'm not gonna lie and pretend I also checked for typos or I'm going to do it before posting because I probably won't and I'm sorry about that but let me know if I absolutely need to do it. Am I posting too fast by the way? Should I wait more? Do you like it slow? Gentle? Rough? I'll stop, ignore me.

 

“Listen, is there by chance some unresolved sexual tension between you and Theo?”

Liam walked away from the others just the time to grab a milkshake at the bar next to the pool and half of said milkshake ends up on the ground when Isaac suddenly appears from behind him, asking about his sexual life like he was talking about the weather.

_“Excuse me?”_

“I asked if there’s by chance some unresolved sexual tension between you and Theo.” Isaac is wearing a swimsuit, a short sleeved shirt and a thin beige scarf. _A scarf._ Who wears scarves at the pool? The same kind of person who asks you about your sexual tension without ever having talked to you before, Liam guesses.

“What kind of question is this?” Liam snaps trying to keep himself from pouring what’s left of his milkshake on his stupid scarf.

“A question, curiosity” Isaac shrugs innocently. “I mean, after Stiles and Derek I don’t want to make the same mistake.”

Liam frowns confused.

“Stiles and Derek?”

“Yes, I didn’t see it coming and I lost fifty dollars. Even if I’m still convinced it’s not valid since I was in France. If I was here, I would have noticed, just Scott bet against it and as much as I love him, it’s known that Scott is not the brigh-”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Isaac stops, looking at him surprised.

“Stiles and Derek. Don’t you know?”

Liam takes a few more steps and then he stops abruptly, because he didn’t know.

Suddenly Stiles climbing Derek shoulder trying to drown him, the way he keeps trying despite it being useless, the constants brushing of their bodies during the fight, Derek’s badly hidden smile, everything acquires a new sense in Liam’s eyes.

“Oh my god, _Stiles and Derek.”_

“Stiles and Derek” Isaac confirms.

Liam is conflicted between the shock for the revelation, which is unexpected and unbelievable and at the same time in a weird familiar way it’s not at all, and the indignation due to the fact he’s always the last one to know things.

And of course Scott is okay with the idea of Liam having his own pack, since inside the principal pack already exists a sub-pack, the pack of the last arrived, those who stayed in Beacon Hills and are out of the gossip and bets circle happening in the whatsapp group of the original pack. Liam suddenly sees everything clearly: the hierarchy of the pack is defined by the big hierarchy of virtual groups: Liam, Mason and Corey are in the expanded group with Scott, Malia, Lydia and Stiles, but are _not_ in the other group with the hold guard, comprehending for sure Isaac, Jackson, Ethan and who knows who else, the group where the very important things like unresolved sexual tensions are discussed.

Liam has his own group with just Mason and Corey, of which neither Scott or anyone else is part, and this is, Liam realizes, because he actually has his own pack.

The pack of the last arrived _is_ Liam’s pack and as soon as he’ll reunite with his phone he’ll have to add Theo to the group.

“So, about that tension?”

Liam doesn’t know why he should keep track of his personal tension to some guy wearing a scarf at the pool, as if he was the inspector of sexual tensions appositely come from France to measure the tension rate in the air, but since he has nothing to hide, Liam decides to answer anyway.

“No, absolutely not, me and Theo don't have any unresolved sexual tension.”

“Did you resolve it?”

Liam risks to choke again and this time he’s not even drinking.

“Excuse me?”

“Is there some _resolved_ sexual tension between you?”

“Oh my god _no_. There’s nothing resolved, we didn’t resolve anything, we don’t-”

“Okay, easy” Isaac raises his hands in surrender. “I was just curious. You smell a lot like him.”

Liam automatically brings his nose close to his shoulder and sniffs himself before remembering he’ll probably won’t smell anything, since he’s so used to have Theo’s scent on him.

He clears his throat. “It’s because we live together.”

Isaac nods, raising his brows. He doesn’t say anything, but there’s something heavily sceptic in those eyebrows. He has known him for less than a hour and Isaac Lahey’s brows are already calling him a liar. Fuck this guy.

“We slept in the same bed last night, okay? This is way you smell him” Liam snorts impatiently, challenging. Why is he justifying himself with Isaac? What kind of justification does _he_ have for that skirt? “But we didn’t resolved the sexual tension. Which didn’t exist in the first place. We just slept. Me on my side of the bed and he in his. Without tension.”

Isaac shrugs and says _okay_ , but his brows are doing it again.

 

 

“What are they doing?”

Mason raises his eyes from the deck of cards in his hands, spotting his best friend on the other side of the glass door, apparently busy trying to rip away the skirt from the blonde guy’s neck, busy instead suffocating.

“Oh thank god” Lydia sighs relieved. “I couldn’t stand seeing that scarf any longer.”

 

***

 

 

It’s just when Liam starts descending the ladder of the pool, stepping in the heated water, and meets Theo’s eyes who’s swimming a few feet from there, that he remembers what happened the last time they were in a pool. It’s not like he actually had the time to forget it, since it happened literally the night before and it’s the reason why Liam slept so little – well, the hunters are the reason, but the hunters wouldn’t have caught them if they stayed at the Halloween party.

If Theo didn’t live with him, Liam would have had time to throw himself in his bed and _think_ about it,  but Theo sneaked under the blankets with him and hugged him and Liam’s brain is never at his best when Theo is in his vital space. Liam’s vital space must be extended to the entire pool now, because Theo looks at him with his head barely out of the water, the wet hairs brushing his green eyes, and Liam’s brain stops again.

“Liam, sweetheart, could you go play the little statue somewhere else?”

Before Liam can finally enter the pool instead of standing there on the ladder staring at Theo with his eyes widen like a deer caught in headlights, Lydia’s need of using the ladder vanishes in a fountain of sprays.

“Jackson, damn it, my hair!” she snaps surfacing annoyed, only to swim away to avoid the boy’s bomb dip.

“Everything okay Liam?” Mason looks at him frowning, a step behind him, and he seems a little worried – or maybe he just wants to use the ladder as well.

“Yes, of course, everything’s fine” Liam says before grabbing him by his hips and lifting him with all his strength. The sharp cutting noise Mason’s back produces colliding with the water makes it looks even more like a wrestling move and Liam has just a second to feel guilty, before jumping as well.

 

 

“I’m sorry” Liam repeats for the umpteenth time, his chin on the back of his hands on the side pool.

“It’s okay” Mason says from his lounge chair, Corey’s hand pressing a cloth on his bleeding nose.

“I thought you’d move.” It was kinda funny how Liam’s kneel hit with mathematical precision Mason’s face. 

“I said it’s okay” Mason reassures him with the face he does when he concludes sentences in his head adding insults to them. _It’s okay, you brainless idiot._

“Scream, Lydia, scream!”

Liam didn’t think someone more competitive than him could exist, but Jackson’s is shouting with pure homicidal rage in his eyes and it’s as clear as the sun that he’s not joking as he presses his ex girlfriend, sitting astride on his shoulders, into shoving Stiles down Derek’s shoulders with her banshee scream, dead or alive. 

“Shut up Jackson, it’s cheating!” Stiles isn’t happy about it and he doubles his efforts to make Lydia fall, agitating his legs against Derek’s chest, while the older wolf just stands there with his arms crossed as if there wasn’t a war in front and in top of him, until instead he suddenly starts sinking, all without moving a muscle, until the edge of his hair is underwater as well.

“What the hell...” before Stiles knows it the water is at his throat and Jackson and Lydia starts celebrating their victory between the pack applauses.

“Not _again_ ” Derek growls as Stiles drags his head out of the water and immediately the scaly shimmer Liam thought he saw in the water near Jackson makes sense. He really has a tail then.

“Wait, are you paralyzed?”

“No, Stiles, I enjoy myself pretending I’m a mollusc, _of course_ I’m paralyzed you idiot!”

“Jackson, you son of a dick, you cheated!”

“Stiles, fuck...”

“Stop whining Derek. Jackson did you hear me? You chea-”

“ _Have you noticed_ I’m paralyzed from the neck and down in eight feet of water?”

“Yes, I’m the one keeping you alive, in case _you_ didn’t notice.”

“And when the venom will fade who’ll kick Jackson’s ass, mh? You or me?”

Liam observes Stiles and Derek floating and bickering breathless a few feet from him and for a brief, terrifying moment the image of them having sex crosses his mind like a lightening. He immediately moves his eyes, finding Jackson already busy organizing the new match: Corey already took Lydia’s place and Mason is still on his chair, his eyes fixed on the spot where Scott is helping Stiles hoisting Derek’s slump body out of the pool. Despite his still bleeding and most likely aching nose, Mason looks like he’s in the middle of an extracorporeal mystical experience and Liam guesses Derek’s wet abdominals, paralyzed or not, are still Derek’s wet abdominals.

“Theo, come on” Jackson sounds impatient of winning again and Liam follows Theo with his eyes as he swims to position himself. “Who wants to-”

Liam shouldn’t play this type of games, he knows it, he’s extreme competitiveness and his lack of self-control make hard for nobody to get hurt, but Liam’s legs don’t care about any of this apparently, because they instinctively take a step forward, while his shoulders move from the poolside to reach Theo, except Ethan already preceded him.

Feeling a bit idiot, he comes back to look at his best friend finding that he abandoned his location to go help Scott and Stiles placing Derek on a lounge chair and really, Liam doesn’t think Mason’s help was necessary. He absently wonders if Stiles couldn’t be jealous, and if Corey isn’t, but Corey is pushing against Theo’s naked and wet shoulders trying to make him fall from Ethan’s and he doesn’t seem like he remembers he has a boyfriend. Liam stays there at the side of the pool watching the fight, just like the majority of the pack – someone distracts from time to time to go taking advantage of Derek’s paralyzed body, who now wears Lydia’s straw hat and pink sunglasses. Liam can’t see his eyes behind the dark lenses, but he guesses he’s not happy.

The point is, Liam is not particularly happy either.

And it’s stupid and immature of course, because it’s not like Ethan stole his place forever, Jackson is thirsty for blood and he’ll probably won’t be satisfied until he’ll have defeated every single member of the pack and Liam _will_ have his chance to play, coupled with Scott or Malia or maybe even Isaac, who finally took off his scarf and even dipped his toes in the pool.

Theo’s muscles, all shiny because of the water, stretch and dart on his arms as he blocks Corey’s shoves without effort, keeping himself well steady with his tights on Ethan’s shoulders, and Liam is not bothered at all, it’s just that he really doesn’t see why Ethan didn’t climb on Jackson’s shoulders, since they’re boyfriends and all, Corey just needed to stay out of the pool with Mason, who on the other hand should have stayed on his lounge chair, since Derek’s wet abdominals are booked by Stiles anyway, because this is how it should work, when guys are half naked and in need of physical contact, they should look for it in their better half without ending up on the wrong shoulders leaving other people all alone at the poolside with an unbearable frustration in their chest.

Liam is angry and he doesn’t know why and it’s the story of his life.

Corey is clearly about to fall and it’s then that Liam sees it.

It peeps out of the water and it’s green and scaly and even if Ethan is closer, and he could have touched him without even surfacing, Ethan is his boyfriend, and Liam closes his claws on Jackson’s tail a second before it can touch Theo’s ankle.

At the sight of the tail Stiles’ protests reach such levels of indignation they top Isaac hysterical laughs – _“He still has it!”_ – and the whole pack agrees for Jackson’s disqualification. Liam still has his tail between his claws, his eyes glowing.

“Okay, you can leave it now” Jackson sighs as Corey slips from his shoulders. Liam realizes there’s a part of him that’s not satisfied with the idea of just leaving it. There’s a part of him that wants to hit Jackson’s squared jaw.

Derek is still partially paralyzed on his lounge chair and he’s trying really hard to take Lydia’s sunglasses off and Liam found it funny until now, but this is Theo and he’s part of _his_ pack and it doesn’t matter if he wasn’t even aware he had a pack until an hour ago, no one can touch it.

“Come on Liam, get on.” Scott is suddenly at his side and he’s kneeling a little, nodding at him. Liam loosens his grip and Jackson’s tail slips from his fingers until it disappear. Liam doesn’t want to know where exactly.

In a few seconds he’s on his alpha and then his hands are on Theo’s shoulders, harsh and unstable on slippery skin, feet moving underwater while they both try to prevail. Theo scratches his clavicle and Liam almost breaks his nose with his head, pulling each other hair is against the rules apparently and everything in their fight is more forward and aggressive than the previous ones, but Theo’s balance is clearly better than his and nobody is surprised when Liam falls in the water dragging Theo with him and accidentally kicking Scott in the face in the meanwhile. His eyes burn because of the chlorine and his hand is still closed around Theo’s arm, while his soft hair tickles his chin. He’s out of breath, because he’s underwater and because in the fall Theo headbutted him in the chest, his ears are closer to the pool floor than the surface and he can still feel his foot touching some part of Scott’s body, and he doesn’t know if Scott’s head is underwater like them or not, but Liam’s arm moves with a willing of its own and his fingers grips tight Theo’s hair, lifting his head and pulling him closer. Liam presses roughly his mouth on Theo’s and his tongue impatiently finds his way between his parted lips, quickly, with the need of a breath of air after the apnoea.  

He barely meets Theo’s tongue that immediately his arm, again with a willing of its own, pushes hard on Theo’s chest shoving him away, and Liam surfaces again.     

He immediately looks around, but Scott is holding his nose with both his hands and everyone else seems too busy discussing what to do in case of a tie to pay attention to him. Theo surfaces behind him after a few seconds and Liam distinctively hears his fastened heartbeat. It’s so loud he wonders how the others don’t hear it.

The beige fabric of Isaac’s scarf floats in front of him like some kind of marine sneak, soaking and starting to sink, but Liam can’t focus on anything else besides Theo’s frantic heart.

 

 

Theo never blushed in his life and he’s not red even then, as he nonchalantly pretends nothing happened, swimming a little and mostly floating with no purpose, but still, for several interminable seconds he’s sure it’s written on his face. He doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes and he’s just waiting for someone to ask him explanations to jump out of the pool and dart towards the exit, leaving Liam with dealing with the consequences of _his_ actions, but seconds fly and everyone keeps chatting and joking, as if nothing happened. As if Liam didn’t just – _kissed him? Can he called it that?_ five feet from them, in a pool crowded with supernatural ears.

Just someone with a severe lack of control over his body and instinct could do something like that as he’s surrounded by his pack and honestly, Theo should be less surprised than this by Liam’s rashness, while on the other hand he’s a lot taken aback by himself when he realizes his directionless swimming brought him dangerously close to Liam and when he dives his head underwater, swimming a little more before turning back, a shiver of excitation runs on his back. Liam is already underwater and Theo holds a smile.

It’s a dangerous stupid game and maybe that’s why they can’t stop.

They swim around the pool with absent and bored expressions, between the messy hair and loud chatting of the pack, without ever looking at each other, while underwater, in the silence between everyone’s legs, their eyes immediately find each other and so their lips, in quick playful kisses stolen between a swim and the other, before surfacing away.

Theo has no idea what he’s doing and he wonders if this is how Liam feels all the time.

 

 

Derek is sitting on the poolside with his legs still partially paralyzed, his arm crossed on his chest and a frown on his face. He doesn’t know who’s more stupid, those two, who think it’s not so fucking evident what they’re doing, or the rest of the pack, who actually doesn’t notice.

 

********

 

Theo taps his fingers on the steering wheel, occasionally joining Mason and Corey’s chats, and Liam keeps his eyes on the road without saying a word.

The afternoon with the pack went surprisingly better than what he expected, after his initial malcontent Stiles just pretended Theo wasn’t there and Malia kept herself at a pacific indifference as well. They didn’t even notice when Theo cheated during the cards game which is ridiculous because Liam noticed it immediately, maybe because he watched him doing it so many times, every detail of his face and the movement of his hands and he could catch him cheating with his eyes close, but the point is that they’re going back home now and Liam’s brain keeps running miles in his head.

It’s not that Liam doesn’t like not to think about things, because that’s a way of facing life he likes a lot actually, what he doesn’t like on the other hand, what doesn’t let him relax in the passenger seat and peacefully join the conversation, is when there’s something _specific_ not to think about and when the something specific keeps being there for too long, transforming not thinking in something tiring and extenuating instead of a pleasant hobby. When it’s like that, Liam believes, it could be that the simplest and less tiring solution it’s, surprisingly, to _think._

And this is what Liam is doing now, while Theo stops in front of Mason’s house and his friends say their goodbyes. Mason and Corey haven’t even reached the alleyway when Liam opens the door as well.

“I’ll sleep at Mason’s” he informs Theo before jumping out of the car and reaching his friends, because Liam is finally ready to think about it and he can’t do it at home with Theo, because then they would end up sleeping all hugged like that night and Liam doesn’t know how to think when Theo hugs him.

 

 

Theo stares at his hands abandoned on the wheel for several seconds, perplexed and with the sound of the door slamming at his right still in his ears. He’s not sure of what just happened and why everything needs to be always so rash and sudden with Liam, without ever a sense or an explanation, or why a second before they’re in the pool looking for each other underwater, like they couldn’t resist a single afternoon without touching each other, and a second later Liam is escaping his car like he’s contagious or something.

He registers the sound of quick footsteps just when the door opens again and Liam’s hairs are brushing his forehead as he presses his lips against his.

“Goodnight. The hoodie is on my bed” he whispers when they part, his breathing still caressing his lips and his eyes in his. There’s a new determined spark in those eyes and Theo has barely the time to notice it before the door slams again and he’s alone in the car, even more confused than before.  _(Happier than before.)_

 

 


	16. Liam's plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liam has a plan. That's it.

 

 

Liam is the third wheel.

He suddenly realizes it when it’s already been a few hours since his auto invitation to spend the night at Mason’s place, when his best friend grabs the spare mattress for him and Corey instead climbs on Mason’s bed like he probably did so many other times.

Liam is the third wheel and he still has no intention of leaving.

“Do you guys want to have sex?” He proceeds to ask and immediately Mason is spitting water everywhere, coughing. Corey turns invisible impressively quick. “Not with me, I mean you two, alone. I can go on the couch and wait for you to finish.”

Liam doesn’t want to move to the other room on the couch and stare at the ceiling waiting for his best friend to reach his orgasm, because then he’d not be able to think and thinking is the main reason Liam is there being the third wheel in the first place.

Luckily it seems Mason is not too keen on the idea as well, because he blushes shaking his head. “No, we don’t want to have sex now, Liam, what the hell...”

“Well, there wouldn’t be anything wrong with it” Liam replies urgently. “If you wanted to have sex. Corey is your boyfriend and you like him, it doesn’t have to be _weird_ or...”

“What is he saying?” Corey is still invisible, but Liam can hear him perfectly from the other side of the room.

“I don’t know” Mason glances at the apparently empty bed, before looking at him again. “Liam, what are you saying?”  
“I’m saying” Liam continues quick, without actually having an idea of what he’s saying or what he’s about to say. “That if you like a boy, and not for example a girl, there’s nothing wrong with it. If you want to sleep close to him and feel his skin against yours, and if instead you don’t want to sleep at all and you want to feel his skin under your tongue and-”

“Oh my god.”

“Liam-”

“No, I’m saying something important, okay? It’s not _wrong_ , there’s nothing-”

“We had this conversation five years ago, remember? When I came out and everything?” There’s a shrill note in Mason’s voice now. “You’re very nice, Liam, but there’s no need for you to give us your blessing, really.”

“No, you’re absolutely right” Liam agrees with fervour. “You have _no fucking need_ of my blessing, or Scott’s or Stiles’, or _Malia’s_. What do you need someone’s approval for? Even yourself? If you like Corey, you like Corey and that’s it. You can’t do a damn thing about it.”

“Liam, I really don’t-”

“I kissed Theo.”

Mason’s lips part with no sound and Corey is visible again, still crouched on the bed. They both stare at him surprised.

Mason looks like he wants to say something, but all he can do is gasp.

“I kissed Theo” Liam repeats, even firmer this time. Because saying it out loud, telling Mason, is actually like telling himself and Liam absolutely needs to hear it more times. _Just like he kissed Theo more times._

“Today” he adds then, while the perfect ‘o’ formed by Corey’s mouth starts buckling lightly at the corners, until it becomes a trapeze. “Underwater, while nobody was looking.”

“And yesterday night” he adds hesitant, while Mason widens his eyes. “After Emma’s party. And...” He clears his voice. “And before, when I ran back again.”

Mason takes a step back, sitting on the bed, his gaze on the floor.

“Okay” he sighs slowly after a few seconds, nodding and bringing his eyes back on Liam. “Did you like it?”

Liam swallows. “What?”

“Kissing Theo” Corey answers for him. “Did you like it?”

Liam doesn’t know why he’s so confused by the question.

“I didn’t... _not_ liked it” he murmurs slowly, thinking about how his heart jumped when Theo’s lips harshly pushed against his the first time, shoving him to the surface, and how he thought he was dreaming the second time, with his fingers gripped to his wet hair and Theo’s smooth tongue against his. He thinks about the adrenaline of the caste stolen kisses in the pool, so close to the rest of the pack, about the necessity he pulled Theo’s mouth against his with when they fell in the water. “I liked it.”

Mason keeps nodding imperceptibly.

“Wow. Okay” he says. “There’s nothing wrong, Liam. And you don’t need anyone’s approval.”

“If you like Theo, you like Theo and that’s it.” Corey shrugs, repeating his words with a smile.

Liam _didn’t say_ he likes Theo, just that he kissed him, and he feels the impulse to point this out.

“Don’t tell Isaac” he begs instead.

Mason frowns.

“I was already composing his number” He jokes. “That I don’t have, by the way.”

“Sadly” Corey adds, glancing at him with a little smile. Mason returns it a little guilty.

“I wouldn’t do anything with it anyway” he whispers before leaning on his boyfriend’s lips.

Liam stares at them careful, noticing the way Mason kisses Corey is not at all the way Liam kisses Theo, a sweetness and a familiarity completely extraneous to them. He envies them a little.

Liam is the third wheel again, he realizes it as he stares at them, but Liam came there to _think_ and out of place will be only the ones that won’t help him think.

“He slept in my bed” he announces and the attention is back on him. “Just this night. We hugged and we slept.” He clears his throat. “He likes my scent.” _And I like his._ “He didn’t say it, but-”

“He likes more than your scent if he let you kiss him more than once, Liam” Corey giggles.

Liam feels his lips pressing one against the other in the attempt to stop them from folding as well in something similar to a smile.

“So, we don’t tell Isaac” Mason says, absently but with careful eyes. “What about Theo?”

Theo _knows_ Liam kissed him, but Liam knows perfectly what Mason means.

And Liam is there because he’s tired of not thinking about it.

“Yes” He nods determinate, after a few seconds. “Yes, Theo should, he _has to_ know. We both have to. Me and Theo have to...”

“Talk” Corey suggests.  
“Talk” Liam approves, a little hesitant because talking is not something he does particularly well. Then he turns to Mason, who’s participating to the conversation but who’s also throwing him thoughtful glances since he admitted he kissed Theo. “Mason, are you...I mean, I don’t need anyone's approval, we said, but is this okay, for you?”

Mason looks at him surprised, before nodding decisive. “Yes” he says before bringing a hand to his chin, as he always does when he thinks. “Yes, Liam, I think it’s...less surprising than what it should. Actually, I don’t think it’s surprising at all, not after the last weeks. I can’t say I trust him one hundred percent, not yet, but I can’t say I’m worried either, not really” Mason shrugs, while Corey smiles behind him. “He did what he did and I won’t ever forget, but I see it too, he’s not the same person he was when he first came back to Beacon Hills last year.”

Liam smiles, his chest suddenly lighter.

 

He still has no idea how much wrong Mason is.

 

 

***

 

When he closes Mason’s door behind him, the morning after, Liam has a plan.

It’s not a particularly elaborated plan, Mason and Corey have actually insisted it shouldn’t even be called plan, that calling it _plan_ endangers a fundamental step of the plan which is spontaneity, but it doesn’t matter what everyone says, when Liam puts his keys in his home door lock that morning, Liam knows he has a plan. It’s because of it that his heart beats a little faster than usual, not too much, just a little, and it’s because of it that he’s been feeling a thin but constant excitation pervade him since he woke up, because he has a plan and he’s about to put it in act.  

Liam will make pancakes for breakfast, that’s what he’s gonna do, ignoring the eggs and bacon his mother is cooking right in front of him, then he’ll bring them upstairs, he’ll wake Theo up giving him a kiss on the lips like it was nothing – just in case he forgot about the fact they’ve kept _doing it_ for two days –, he’ll ask him out on a date, no time wasted, maybe he’ll also invite him to the end-of-year dance, and then, if he’ll say yes, he’ll give him pancakes, and they’ll both eat pancakes knowing they have a date, just like people who like each other usually do.

Liam didn’t think of what he’ll do if Theo will say that no, he doesn’t want to go on a date with him, because it’s not Liam the one he likes, just his lips. He didn’t think about that because he’d be pointless, since Liam’s brain stops working in some circumstances and it’s not able to follow premeditated moves, and Theo rejecting him would sure as hell be one of those circumstances.

Another possibility Liam didn’t think about is that Theo is not heavily asleep in his bed, he’s not in his room nor his house, like his mother confirms when he runs back downstairs.

Classes won’t start before a few hours and Theo went out even before Liam’s mum woke up, without leaving messages.

“Where are you?” Liam immediately texts him, annoyed by the way the universe plotted against him: in the month they lived together, Theo never woke up before him, often risking to be late for class, and the fucking morning Liam decided to put his plan into effect Theo is suddenly an early riser.

He immediately informs Mason of his bad luck and Mason laughs at him, despite that night he was so exhaustive in explaining to him how he’s not an half measure person and he should clarify things with Theo as soon as possible, in order not to become exasperating and monothematic like he had been with Hayden.

Liam doesn’t find himself monothematic nor exasperating and he’s perfectly capable of being patient and mature, and so he decides with no problem to postpone his plan to the next day, he eats all the pancakes and also some eggs and bacon because his mum made it and it’d be rude not to, and he walks upstairs to nap a little before school. Maybe he won’t even wait until tomorrow, he can do it that afternoon, right after school, or that evening, before sleeping, he thinks as he toes his shoes off and lets himself fall on his messy bed. His lacrosse hoodie is all creased on the mattress on the ground, clearly used that night, but Liam, his nostrils surrounded by Theo’s reassuring scent, has no doubts where Theo slept.

He presses his nose tight against his pillowcase and he inhales deeply, the torpor already making his eyelids heavy, but his right hand starts a call almost absently, because yes, he wants to take a nap before school but he’s also curious on where the hell Theo is.

Liam is so relaxed and sleepy that he’s close to immediately press the red button and end the call, that Theo will tell him himself where he was in a few hours, when they’ll see each other at school, but the voice mail starts and he immediately opens his eyes, confused.

Theo never turns his phone off, not even at night.

Liam lets his eyes run around the room, but Theo clearly brought his phone with him. It absolutely doesn’t make sense going out with your phone off, so there’s probably no signal where he is. In a few minutes he’ll see the call and reach him back.

Liam waits twenty minutes before texting again.

_“Hey, can you just tell me if you’re okay?”_

He doesn’t want to make a scene, but it was just the night before that the hunters left him on the asphalt with a poisoned bullet in his chest and Theo’s screams in his ears, and so, even if his reason tell him to just sleep, that he’ll see Theo at school when he wakes up, thousands of _what if_ keeps following one another in his mind, stopping him from closing his eyes.

 _Probably_ Theo is perfectly fine and he’ll find his texts and missed calls ridiculous, but if Theo wasn’t okay and Liam left him in the hands of Monroe to take a nap...Liam starts the third call.

Sometimes Theo ignores Liam and doesn’t answer him when he’s next to him just to annoy him, but it never happened that he didn’t picked up his phone and Liam keeps thinking how easy it could be that they didn’t catch all the hunters last night. One is enough. One hunter and a moment of distraction.

Liam doesn’t call the sheriff, because he has been trying to contact Theo for barely an hour and he won’t call the police, his dignity doesn’t let him. And he doesn’t call Scott either, even if the pack is still in town, because Theo would never forgive him for putting them all at his back without a solid reason.

He calls Chris Argent who with his men following a new code supervises exactly things like that. He starts causal, asking if he thinks that could be more Monroe’s men in Beacon Hills besides the ones arrested the night before, and when he informs him about Theo he does it with a lightheart tone, ruined by the fact that he didn’t wait more than three seconds and it’s barely eight in the morning.

Argent is pretty sure there aren’t any hunters left in the city and Liam is pretty sure that _pretty sure_ means nothing, because when a hunter fills you with wolfsbane and bullets, concepts like pretty alive or pretty dead means nothing, it’s always one or the other. Argent also says his men will have a look around, keeping their eyes open for Theo’s truck.

They find him fifteen minutes later, parked near the entry of the underground tunnels leading to the Dread Doctors old labs, and Argent tells him this with an harsh and cold tone.

Liam knows what he’s thinking.

“I’ll go check on him” he says immediately, the voice barely getting out of his lips.

“I expect you to do that” Argent says firm and then he hangs up.

Liam knows what he’s thinking, because deep down he’s thinking it too.

 

 

 

Liam is a werewolf, but he’s still breathless as he runs towards Mason’s house to ask him a lift, his heart beating like crazy in his chest. And if until that moment he hoped Theo was okay, that he hadn’t been attacked again, now he can only focus on how much he wants for Theo to have a perfectly logic and plausible explanation that meets his need to keep kissing him every single day and sleep close to him every single night.

Argent’s men are probably already on the place, hidden, but if Theo will give him an explanation, freeing him from that weight on his chest, Liam is sure he’ll kiss him right there and Argent, who lived years in France, can tell Isaac and the whole France and Liam won’t care at all.

Liam jumps on his best friend’s car and he keeps repeating himself Theo will have a fucking explanation, and his heart keeps beating too fast in his chest because he can’t stop thinking about the alternative.

 

 

 

He’d just like to go back and not call it _plan_ , just like Corey suggested, because maybe, if he did it, the universe wouldn’t have turned on him and it wouldn’t have all gone to shit.

Except the universe hasn't even started yet.  

 


	17. I.E.D.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just everyone being stupid.

It’s been thirty minutes and Theo is still in the lab.

Mason parked almost hundred feets afar and Liam stays crouched in the shadow near the entry of the lab without emitting a sound, his ears focused on every single noise: the opening of counters, the rustling of papers, the clangour of metal objects, the impatient snorts. The long silent pause in which Liam can almost hear his heartbeat. Theo is looking for something, there’s no doubt about it.

It doesn’t mean anything, he keeps thinking.

 _The claws, the mask, the serum who brought the chimeras back to life,_ a voice in his head keeps whispering, all things Theo looked for and used in the past. _The files about the pack._

It doesn’t mean anything.

Liam has to force himself several times not to cover the few feet parting him from the entry and irrupting in the room, asking Theo directly what he’s looking for in the lab where the Dread Doctors implanted him his sister heart in his chest. In the lab where he plotted every move that brought Liam to sink his claws in Scott’s flesh.

_It’s the past, it’s not like that anymore._

Liam doesn’t know what Theo is looking for or why he’s there, why he’s able to come back down there like it was nothing, and it means nothing, because Theo could have a perfectly logical explanation. He probably has.

Liam _knows_ if he ran to him now and slammed him against the wall, asking him what the hell he’s doing, Theo’s heart would keep his steady rhythm and his voice wouldn’t tremble. He knows he’d immediately explain to him why he’s there and what he’s doing and it’d be something innocent and logical and credible, and he’d say it with such a naturalness that he’d feel like an idiot for even doubting him, and Liam still couldn’t believe him one hundred percent, because that is exactly what Theo did the first time: pretending and having always the perfect explanation, every single time, never caught unprepared, not in words or facts or chemosignals. Not even in the beating of his heart.

Theo will have an answer that will clean him instantly because this how he is and Liam will never know if it’s the truth or if he’s doing it again, fooling them all, playing them like puppets to move at his own advantage.

And the point is, despite how stupid it may look, despite how much Liam and Scott and Stiles and Malia and all of them were hurt by him the first time, despite he left scars that will never heal, Liam would fall for it in a heartbeat. If Liam entered there now and looked him in the eyes, he’d believe Theo, whatever he said, because he _wants_ to believe him.   

He felt it on his skin how good he is at lying and still he wants to trust him, he wants Theo to have an explanation and be the person Liam thinks he is, that Liam started to see since that _being the bait._

Liam knows that if he looked him in the eyes he’d believe him immediately and this is why he doesn’t enter.

He stays still in the shadow and he waits for Theo to come out half an hour later, nothing in his hands and a defeated look on his face. He walks to the exit of the tunnels just when the other is already at his truck and he watches him pulling his phone out of his pockets, his ears registering the sudden rain of sounds, now that there’s signal again.

He sees him frowning and looking at his screen, because he probably expected Liam to go directly to school from Mason’s place. Liam feels an unpleasant twinge in his stomach at the thought of why he woke up so early instead. _Kissing Theo, did you like it?_

He sees him tapping quick on the keyboard, before shoving his phone in the pocket and starting the engine. The truck disappears towards the city while Liam’s pocket vibrates and his hand shakes a little as he moves it closer. Liam wants to trust Theo with every part of his being and so he takes a deep breath before opening the notification. _Don’t lie, don’t lie, please don’t li-_

“I went for a run, I’m fine. It might be news for you, but I can survive a few hours without you Dunbar. See you at school.”     

 

 

***

 

Mason parked less than a mile away from the tunnels, but Liam reaches his car more than a hour later. They already lost their first class.

He opens the car silently and Mason immediately starts the car, without saying a word.

He doesn’t comment on the state of his hands, but he starts driving home instead of school –his knuckles will heal, but Liam guesses he can’t go to school with a shirt with blood on it.

There’s some sand near his shoes, he notices after awhile. Mason cleaned his car last week and now there’s sand on the little mat in front of the passenger seat because Liam broke his knuckles against a rock and soil wall until it collapsed. He closes his fingers and presses his claws against his palms, hard, because he suddenly feels the urge to lift his right fist and hit himself. There’s sand in Mason’s car and Liam is stupid. Streams of warm blood start draining on his jeans and he didn’t even feel the pain or the claws piercing deep. He spots in the car mirror the glowing yellow of his eyes and he feels even more stupid because he can’t control it. He wants to hit his face against something and he wants to hurt himself, but Mason is right next to him and when he thinks he can’t hold it anymore the cart stops abruptly. They’re in front of his house.

“I’ll wait for you” Mason says and Liam doesn’t reply, because he doesn’t feel like going anywhere, but his mother is at home and he can’t be alone with her. He can’t be alone with anybody.

 

 

Theo’s scent is everywhere. In the bathroom, in the kitchen, on Liam’s bed, on his pillow.

He grabs the first clean shirt he finds and a hoodie, taking it from the depth of his wardrobe. He has practice that afternoon, but his Lacrosse hoodie stays on the mattress on the floor, untouched. He doesn’t even look at it, but he keeps seeing it, unlaced on Theo’s chest while he sleeps peacefully. _I don’t have nightmares when I wear it._   

Liam closes his eyes, inhaling deeply.

_The sun, the moon, the truth._

Theo looks at him mischievous, his chin partly submerged, a drop of water leaving his hair and running on his nose. _Do you think there are any rules Liam?_

_The sun, the moon, the truth._

Liam tries, but his Lacrosse stick breaks under his fingers, scratching him, and all he can sees his Theo’s indifferent face while he types quickly his lies. _You trust him. He’s not part of my pack, but he’s part of yours._  

Theo in his truck lying without even trying, like it was easier than breathing.

_The sun, the moon._

Theo who fooled them all –who fooled _him_ \- for the second time.

_The truth._

Theo who was starting to make him fall in love with him.

 

 

***

 

Mason keeps throwing him tense looks, but he didn’t ask anything. He talked to him just once, when Liam came back in the car after changing and he asked him if he wanted to go to Scott. Professor Martin’s voice keeps resounding empty and senseless in his ears and they didn’t go to Scott obviously, because Liam would jump from a cliff rather than facing his alpha and the rest of the pack in that moment. They’d all have the decency not to say _I told you_ , but they wouldn’t need it.

Liam ‘s throat is occluded by anger and he knows that if the professor asked him something he’d not be able to talk, but during the whole morning his claws don’t surface one single time. He feels his classmates' glances on him and their whispers and it’s clear to everyone that he’s close or in the middle, not even Liam knows for sure, of one of his episodes, but there’s nothing supernatural about it. Liam is at school and his eyes glow with an only human rage, even when Nolan accidentally bumps into his shoulder in the hall and Liam sends him to hit the opposite wall with a well placed shove. Nolan widens his eyes surprised, apologises cut off in his throat and a hand on his aching shoulder. Mason appears next to him in a heartbeat, but Liam has already walked away because he’s not having an episode and he doesn’t plan on biting Nolan’s head off, he’s the one who bumped into him. Liam doesn’t really plan on biting anyone’s head off until he feels a sudden presence at his side, his voice a whisper behind his ear.

“What was that?”

This should be the moment in which Liam finally loses his temper, but suddenly his anger is calmer and colder. He feels it around him, like a gelid bubble wrapping him, and not anymore a volcano trapped in his chest and ready to explode.

“What?” he asks indifferent and he surprises himself with how easily his voice comes out.

“Nolan flying away while he apologizes for bumping into you.” Theo is still behind him, even if Liam fastened his pace.

“Ah, Nolan. You mean the one who shot me with a crossbow?”

“It happened months ago.”

Liam snorts, derisive.

“People don’t change in a few months, Theo.”

 

 

Mason quickly apologized to Nolan –god forbid he starts stabbing people with pencils again, that kid – and he’s now almost running, because Theo literally appeared out of nothing behind Liam and this can’t end well. It can’t end well especially when he sees him lifting his hand like he’s about to grab Liam and it’s then that Mason fastens his pace with a sprint that could earn him a medal in at least some existing competition and closes his fingers on Theo’s arm before he can do the same with Liam.

“Not a good time” he warns him decisive while Liam walks away without looking back.

“Exactly” Theo replies looking at him like he's stupid. “It’s not a good time and I’m his anchor.”

When Mason parts his lips to reply, Theo has already freed himself from his grip and he reached Liam, shoving him with no hesitation in the girl bathroom.

 

 

The bathroom is empty and Liam is not sure if it’s good or bad, because maybe a girl ready to scream and call a professor is exactly what he’d need to avoid tragic results to this. But there’s no one and the only sound his ears register is his own shaky breath and the regular dripping of a bad close faucet.

“Well?” Theo’s raised brow and his crossed arms reflect on the mirror in front of Liam, who still has his back turned to him. His usual imposed calm can’t hide the impatient note in his voice. “What the hell is your problem?”

Liam closes his eyes and inhales deeply before turning around. The truth is that he doesn’t know if he’s more mad at Theo for being so good at pretending or at himself for being so incredibly stupid.

“You mean except the chimera who just shoved me in the girl bathroom?”

It’s just a second before it vanishes again in his smug mask, but Liam clearly catches the thin wrinkle appearing between Theo’s brows, revealing for a second his confusion. Liam doesn’t even remember when was the last time he called him a chimera.

“Let me guess, your beloved history teacher retired? Nolan plots again to be the only captain? Come on, Little Red, I can’t be here all day, can’t you just tell me?”  

He says it casually, naturally, and he thinks he’s _so_ smart. He probably is, because immediately Liam feels the fabric of the red cape flying in the wind and whipping his back while he shivers and holds himself closer to Theo’s warm back, his lips brushing his naked shoulder. Just a casual word and immediately Liam is back at two nights before and it’s exactly what Theo wanted, and this is the problem: now Liam sees it. His subtle way of pulling him back immediately, in reaction to the distance caused by _chimera,_ the way he immediately reaches for repair. It’s not the first time Theo uses tricks like this and Liam noticed it before, absently, and he always thought it was his way of anchoring him, but now he hears him talk, his lips curled in the hint of that smug smirk that never leaves him, and all he can see is manipulation. He’s not anchoring him, he’s manipulating him, and that _little red_ suddenly has the opposite effect of what he hoped for, and his fingertips suddenly itch under the push of his claws threatening to come out.

“Just because you live in my house it doesn’t mean I have to tell you everything, Theo. I already have Mason and the pack for that.” Liam is thinking about Tracey. Theo kissed her before killing her and Liam always found that a pretty disturbing detail not to question why Deucalion told Scott. He kissed her and Liam wonders if their lips were still touching while he was sinking his claws in her back to steal her powers. He didn’t kiss Malia, but he brought her to the point where she wanted it, taking advantage of her family tragedy to seduce her and then put a shot of bullets in her stomach and Liam feels so stupid now, remembering how annoyed he has been at her hatred for Theo. He feels stupid because even now a part of him desperately wants to cling on their kisses like a prove of innocence, when Liam is not even sure if Theo ever kissed anyone without then trying to kill them. If Theo ever did something in his life without hidden purposes.

“How long do you plan on staying at my place by the way? Just to know, it’s been more than a month now.” Liam is almost inebriated by the way he’s controlling himself, letting the anger converge in the fortuity of his words, in the distracted way they sound. He’d like to say he’s proud of his eyes not glowing yellow, of his fangs deep buried in his gums, of how Theo is not bleeding yet, but the truth is that he’s not doing it thanks to a superior self control keeping him from starting a fight at school, it’s that Theo is used to Liam’s blind rage, to insults and punches, Theo knows how to let that slide from him, he almost enjoys it. But Liam wants to hurt him now, he wants more than a broken nose. He wants to give him something he can’t heal from in a few minutes, because it’s what Theo did to him.

Theo stays quiet for several seconds, without hiding the confusion anymore, and now he’s looking at him surprised, like he just solved a particularly hard riddle. “It’s me that you’re mad at.”

“I’m not mad.” The lie he’s been repeating his whole life and he’s not sure how much of the exasperation he points out rolling his eyes is fake. “I was just wondering when I’d have a little privacy back in my own room. Or, well, a complete night of sleep without being interrupted by...you know.” He shrugs and the memory of his fingers closed on his wrist, jointed by the black veins filled with pain, stir loudly between them. The first night, the first nightmare and Liam realizes it just now: Theo couldn’t fake that. There was something real in the middle of everything and it was the nightmare. He’d like to feel ferociously satisfied by the thought that at least some karma exists, but the truth is that it doesn’t matter: he wants to be the one hurting him. “I didn’t said you have to leave, but don’t forget it’s not your home.”  

Liam is trying to hurt him the way he’d do it to the Theo he thought he knew, the one pedalling fast in the night and laugh hard and hugs him under the blankets and whispers him _don’t go_ , the one that keeps stealing his hoodie and rubs his nose on his neck like he wants to breath directly through his skin. The Theo he kissed underwater a few feet from the rest of the pack because he would have died if he didn’t do it.

Liam wonders if the Theo he knew is the same that kissed Tracey, the same that got close to Malia, or if Theo created him just for Liam, if he models his character every time based on the person he wants to fool.

The truth is that Liam has no idea who’s standing in front of him now and if even exists something able to reach him, if there’s something true in the hurt look that reciprocates his for a few seconds, before freezing in a detached glare.

“I remember it perfectly, don’t worry.”

Liam is not sure how he feels as he watches him turning on his heels. Theo once told him people only feel one emotion at a time, but Liam feels confusedly something else under all the anger blinding him. He waits to be alone to give in at his need of punching the wall, but Theo’s hand stills on the door handle too long and eventually he leaves it, his fingers slipping on it inert without applying pressure.

“You followed me” he realizes slowly, turning back to look at Liam, a glint of understanding in his eyes. He’s always been smart after all. “This is why you’re angry.”

Liam just lost the only advantage he had, but for some reason he finds himself sighing in relief. He was never the type to act in the shadow.

Theo sighs, closing his eyes for a few seconds. When he opens them again he looks tired.

“Listen, it’s not what it looks like.”

Liam crosses his arms on his chest, holding a laugh.

“Of course, whenever is it?” he says while his nails stretch out until they’re claws, piercing the skin of his forearms. The acrid smell of blood immediately tickles his nose. “It’s always the opposite of what it looks like with you.”

Theo lowers his eyes on the red drops dripping from his arms before meeting his eyes again. “Liam, listen to me. There’s an explan-”

“I’m _sure_ you have an explanation” Liam stops him, contracting his fingers, his claws still deep buried in his arms. Usually pain helps him staying lucid, but now he barely feels it. “You always have it. But you know what? I don’t wanna hear it. I don’t want to hear another word from you.”

A flash of irritation darts in Theo’s eyes.

“Why not? You’re afraid I'd actually have a logic explanation? You-” Theo stops abruptly and he looks _so_ betrayed now. Liam would like to punch him just for that, for the way he’s able to look real even know. “This is why you didn’t enter to ask me what I was doing instead of just watching? Becau-”

“Because I would have believed you!” Liam snaps interrupting him, the claws pulling out of his arms while he brings his hands at his sides. “To whatever bullshit you’d make up!”

Theo snorts, a bitter smirk deforming his lips.

“And you didn’t _want_ to believe me, that’s the point.”

His voice is so cold now and the hostility in his eyes makes Liam crazy, because he has no right to be angry, as if Liam was the one who faked everything, always. Liam didn’t fake a single thing, not once, not when he kissed him and not when he grabbed his hand under Corey and Mason’s surprised eyes, not when he called him a part of his pack in front of Scott and not when he called him his anchor. Theo is his anchor and this is why Liam closes his hands in fists and buries his claws deep in his palms without that being useful at all.

“Why would someone want to believe you, Theo?” he growls, his golden eyes that keep seeing him at the exit of the tunnels reading his text and immediately answering him, not a second of hesitation. “You didn’t hesitate a second, lying comes natural as breathing to you.”

Theo shakes his head with his eyes on the ceiling and a laugh in his throat. “You were just waiting for this” he says and he keeps not looking at him, as if he was talking to himself and not Liam. “ _Finally_   I made a mistake, what a relief it must be for you.”

Liam though he was angry already, but it’s just now that a low growl shakes his chest and his sight gets foggy, because he prayed so much that Theo didn’t lie as he was waiting for his answer, he hoped with so much strength while he was opening his text to find anything else under his eyes, even a _mind your business,_ rather than a written lie and it hurt so badly. It _hurts_ so badly and Liam hears his growl getting louder and louder, until it stops abruptly instead and there’s just his human voice.

“I thought it was horrible when I realized it” he says and he’s not lying. He felt so powerless the first time he realized they weren’t just nightmares, they were memories. “You know what’s really horrible, you. What _you_ did to her. You can’t just go around stealing people’s heart and...” Liam closes his eyes for a few seconds, the metallic taste of blood filling his mouth as he bites his cheek. “You deserve whatever happened to you.” Theo still has the same indecipherable expression, as if nothing could touch him, and Liam hates him. “ _This_ is what you didn’t deserve, a second chance. I should have never brought you back.” Liam can see it, the exact moment the mask breaks and his jaw tenses, his shoulder line hardens, a flash darts in his eyes. “I should have never destroyed the sword.”

Liam can’t move his eyes from Theo’s upper lip, from its sudden contraction. He expects it to raise it and show his teeth in a ferocious snarl, but after a few seconds he just presses it even tighter against the lower lip and both curl to form a smug grin that looks more like a grimace.

“Probably not” Theo shrugs, detachment sculpted in his face and almost distract voice. “You shouldn’t have destroyed the sword and you shouldn’t have trusted me when I came back to Beacon Hills and you shouldn’t have left your alpha bleeding on the stairs of the library for a girl you had been dating for barely two weeks, but hey, luckily for me it doesn’t matter how much you whines, you can’t travel back in time.”

Liam doesn’t know when his claws got out again, because even if he just registered it he’s been feeling the itching against his palms for awhile now, there where they’re digging for the second times four bleeding holes. The room is blurry in front of his eyes and Theo’s features are all fuzzy.

When he hears a voice again, he doesn’t immediately realizes he’s the one who spoke.

“Travelling back in time no, finding a way to fix a sword, _maybe_.”     

Liam wasn’t there that night, when Theo dropped every mask under the full moon and revealed Scott he was the first chimera. Scott saw clearly in that moment the changing in his eyes, when the loyal childhood friend slipped away and showed the face of the monster. Stiles saw him a few minutes later, when Theo explained his plan to him and Stiles saw him and hit him straight in the face.

Liam wasn’t there, he ran away from the library and from his bleeding alpha before Theo came back to finish the job, he ran to the clinic to find Hayden’s cold body and it was days before he saw him again. Days during which he found out –not from Scott, who wasn’t talking to him anymore- what happened, days in which he found out he had always been a piece in a game bigger than him, that his anger so blind and irrational had been foreseen, provoked and _used,_ an ingredient among the others in a long sequence of calculations coldly studied by the new guy, the one so kind and brave that saved his life. He saw him at school, days later, surrounded by his new chimeras pack, and even if he was prepared, even if it wasn’t an instantaneous change like that night with Scott and Stiles, he was still taken aback by Theo’s totally different eyes. Cold, cruel, amused.

Liam remembers well Theo’s look when he stopped pretending, after he killed Scott. He hasn't seen it since Tara dragged him underground, because when Liam pulled him back he didn't look like that anymore, but he still remembers it vividly and he recognizes it immediately now that he has it in front of his eyes again. It’s a heartbeat, first they’re Theo’s eyes, defensive and angry, but still _Theo’s_ eyes, and as soon as Liam stops talking they’re not anymore.

He’s always been there, under the surface, the same Theo who killed Scott and put the whole pack on its knees and now he’s in front of him and he’s not hiding anymore.

It’s just a second, but Liam almost looses grip on the anger he’s been clinging to for hours to slip in total discomfort. Instead he tightens his fists because people only feel one emotion at a time and giving in to the anger means not bursting into tears like an idiot in the girls bathroom for someone who never stopped lying.

“You want to put the sword back together, little beta?” Liam wished he never saw Theo actually laugh, because he wouldn’t keep thinking how ugly and fake his laugh sounds now. “Do you think I wouldn’t kill you before? You think you’d be able to send me back there, _you?”_ Theo laughs again, that sarcastic ferocious laugh Liam hates so much and under it he can still hears the sound of the blood hitting the floor. His hands are warm and sticky and he just wants Theo to stop talking. “We both know you’re too stupid to have a chance against me. God, you almost killed your alpha and I didn’t even tried. Stiles, he was hard to break, Malia, even Scott, but _you_? The beta who got expelled from school because he couldn’t handle emotions even before the bite? With you it was easy like drinking a glas-”

When Liam’s knuckles crash against his mouth and soak in his warm blood, Theo finally stops talking. Liam registers without actually paying attention to it the sound of his head hitting the wall as he falls back and the animalistic growl escaping his own throat, and Theo hasn’t even reached the floor yet when Liam is on top of him again. He doesn’t know how many punches he throws before the other realizes what’s happening and fights back, but when Theo’s shoe hits him on his chest sending him on the floor, the chimera’s nose and mouth already look like an indistinct clot of blood.

Liam sees perfectly as he gets back on his feet how Theo is still trying to get up, a hand on his bleeding nose and the other one gripped on the radiator next to him, and Liam would never hit an adversary still on the ground.

Theo’s fingers slip from the radiator back to the floor, inert next to his thigh, while Liam’s fist crashes for the second time in a few seconds against his cheek. Liam would never hit an adversary still on the ground, but that’s not Liam, it’s the same kid that kicked and hammered his coach’s car in front of half school last year, hysterically repeating _this is your fault_ before engraving it on the wrecked door, all of it while seeing and hearing perfectly the laughs and screams and eyes all around him, but without assigning them any logic, not until much later.

It’s the same thing now, because Liam _sees_ he should stop, because of how slow and tired Theo’s reactions are, he _knows_ anger makes him stronger, too much, but he can’t link it in any way to his blind rage and to his need of keep hitting harder and faster, first with his right hand and then the other one, and every punch is stronger because he’s afraid that if he stopped for even a second his last glimmer of lucidity, the one that is forcing him to keep his hands closed in fists as tight as he can just so he’s not free to use his claws, wouldn’t be enough anymore.

He keeps them trapped in his bleeding fists, in the burning flesh of his palms, and he keeps hitting too hard, completely indifferent to pain and to Theo’s occasional counterattacks as he keeps him trapped in the corner between the wall and the radiator, and Liam can’t even growl between his teeth the first ‘ _the sun’_ that Theo’s claws suddenly sink in his hip, while with the other hand he slashes his face.

Liam feels deep cuts appearing on his aching cheek and the sharp pain of the still buried claws in his hip and he growls loudly, raising his hand and opening it to show his claws as well, while with the other he blocks Theo’s free arm.

The glowing yellow of Theo’s eyes mirrors Liam’s and he’s looking at him and not at the raised hand above him, and not even at the door opening behind them a few seconds later. When Scott’s firm grip closes on his wrist, Liam still didn’t give a sign of lowering his hand, whether it was to hit or retreat.

“ _Liam”_ Scott doesn’t leave his wrist and he pulls him back, hard, even if Liam is not opposing any resistance, and as he stands up he can hear Theo’s claws slashing his skin as they pull out of his hip. “Liam, _listen to me._ ” The chatting outside the closed door is so loud now, or maybe it was already and Liam just tuned in with the rest of the world again, and among all voices Mason’s is closer, as if he was pressed just against the bathroom door. It’s also the most agitate one.

“Liam, you need to get out of the window, _now_ ” Scott orders and he’s still holding him. His eyes glow red, but he doesn’t need to, Liam doesn’t feel his fangs in his mouth anymore or his claws in his fingers, he doesn’t feel anything at all and he nods automatically. “Both of you” Scott adds glancing at Theo, who lifts himself up into a sitting position, his back against the wall.

Liam doesn’t wait a second and leans his bleeding hands on the sill.

A few seconds later the asphalt takes the place of the shiny tiles of the bathroom, the cold air brushes his burning face and the wind tickles his bloody knuckles. He walks slower than what should be appropriate for someone literally covered in blood in a school parking lot, but immediately two hands grab his shoulders and he finds himself thrown into the passenger seat of the jip, while Stiles steps on the accelerator incited by Isaac’s hysterical esclamations.  

“Thanks for the advice Isaac, _go go go_ , what a brilliant idea, I was totally thinking to stay here and do a panoramic tour of the school.” Stiles makes the wheel do an almost complete turn with only one hand, barely avoiding a kid on the pedestrian crossings, without even wincing. “Thank god you came back from France to enlighten us all with your surprising acumen.”

Isaac, from the backseat, replies something sounding even more sarcastic and bitter, but Liam leans his forehead against the cold glass of the window and he suddenly stops hearing their bickering.

 

 

 

The worst thing is not that he doesn’t even have the pieces of the sword, that he never picked them up from the floor of the police station that day, before the Ghost Riders attacked it.

The worst thing is that even now, if he could go back in time, he’d leave them on the floor. Even now he wouldn’t be able to do that to him, and he found it out while Theo was sinking his claws in his hip and Liam still couldn’t lower his clawed hand on him.

  


	18. On the bridge

 

“It’s all the unresolved sexual tension, it was meant to happen sooner or later.”

“I was so excited, _Liam is going to kill Theo, come to the school,_ and I thought _finally.”_

“Did you two at least kiss before Scott arrived?”

“ _So_ excited, it’s finally happening, and instead we were there to _stop_ him and not to watch, I can’t believe it, I’m so fucking disappointed.”

“What did he do anyway? Did he sleep with some other guy?”

“Really, Liam, I’m sorry, if you tried somewhere else and not in the school I would have did everything in my power to keep Scott from stopping you, you know that, right? That I’m always in favour of Theo’s murder?”

“Or with a _girl_ maybe?”

“When you want to try again in a place with no witnesses don’t hesitate to call me, I’m totally ready to take a flight just for this.”

“Had you at least explicitly agreed on the exclusivity of this sexual tension? Because if not you can’t really blame him.”

“I don’t have supernatural strength or anything like that, but I can help. I can tell you where are the patrols at any time. You just need to do it when Scott is not here.”

“I understand the anger and the jealousy, but you can’t be so dramatic if you two weren’t officially together: the best reaction in these kind of situation is a passive aggressive revenge.”

“I’d personally choose the preserve, they never check it after nine in the evening, and we can pretend he’s been mauled by some wild animal.”

“Sex in the open is a great way to make peace.”

Liam never saw two people performing in a back and forth this long without considering a problem at all the fact that each of them is lost in his own monologue that has nothing to do with the other’s one. It’s almost fascinating the way Isaac and Stiles are able to ignore each other while also politely respecting each other’s turn of speaking and in some other moment Liam would film them before shouting at them to shut up and mind their business, that it’s his life the one they’re talking about, but all he can do now is staring with dead eyes the road running out of the window, without thinking anything in particular.

All his anger seems to be left in the bathroom with Theo’s bloody face and now he feels emptied. Not sad, not relieved, just empty, wrapped in a bubble where emotions can’t reach him.

“Why does he have that face?”

“It’s his I.E.D. I think, it leaves him dazed after or something like that, look.” Even when he grabs the fingers Stiles just snapped two inches from his eyes and twist them a little, he does it by instinct, without actual irritation. “ _Ouch_ , okay Liam, okay, not dazed, not dazed at all, got it, my hand apologizes, leave it now. Okay, thanks, better. Thanks for your help Isaac, useful as always, sitting there doing nothing, thank god you’re back, I don’t know how we survived without you so long.”

 

 

Stiles already drove around Beacon Hills three times when Liam realizes their lack of destination. Despite how not attracting the prospecting of spending the eternity on the jip listening to Stiles and Isaac bickering over everything – _comprehended if Stiles took or not the wrong turn when he went to the left, when Liam always thought that if you don’t have a destination you literally can’t get the wrong turn, but Isaac is not of the same opinion apparently_ – be, he also feels kinda relieved to know that there’s not the whole pack waiting for him in some house or at the clinic.

 

 

He doesn’t know after how long exactly his phone vibrates against his thigh, informing him Mason went back home early, but as soon as he tells the others, speaking for the first time since he entered the car, Stiles turns towards Mason’s house without hesitation. After a few minutes they’re there and Liam jumps out of the jip without a word and Stiles is still rattling on about how it was a pleasure when the door slams behind him cutting his voice out.

Liam notices how they leave just when he rings the bell and not a second before that, and in another moment he’d be bothered, but not now.

“Hey.” Mason’s smile is warm and even if there’s a glint of worry in his eyes it’s not the way Stiles and Isaac were looking at him, the way everyone always looks at him, like he was a bomb ready to explode.

“Hey.” Liam tries to smile and he’s immediately aware of how his voice sounds cracked, because after all he _feels_ like a bomb, it’s just that he already exploded and now he’s just pieces on the floor. Mason’s arms are immediately around him as soon as the first tear runs fast on his chin and Liam hides his sobs in his best friend’s neck, his familiar scent comforting him now that he doesn't have an anchor anymore.

 

 

Scott came by a few hours later, alone and with an excessive amount of boxes of pizza for just three people –or for ten for that matters. They all sat on the floor and played videogames, and not once Scott mentioned that morning. He threw him some furtive looks, his eyes a little too wary, but he didn’t ask a question and even when he got back to his motorcycle he just offered Liam a ride home.

 _They don’t believe I’ll bite my parents’ heads off if they leave me alone with them,_ Liam thought. He found it a sad thing to feel satisfied about.

 

 

Once they arrived, Liam sneaked inside before Scott could say anything like _if you need to talk I’m here_ , because then Liam would have lost it again, this time with his alpha.

He locked himself in his room and he kicked the empty and still messy mattress on the floor. He laid down on his bed without even trying to sleep, staring at the ceiling for almost twenty minutes before giving in and wearing his Lacrosse hoodie abandoned by Theo that morning.

It’s stupid, but his heart stops beating furiously as soon as his scent wraps around him like so many times before.

Theo is his anchor, but that’s not the reason why it hurts so much.

_I don’t have nightmares. I don’t have nightmares when I sleep with your hoodie._

It’s because Liam thought he was his anchor as well.

_It reminds me I’m here and not... somewhere else._

He thought it wasn’t just because he pulled him out of hell, he actually thought it was _him._

 

 

***

As soon as Scott’s motorcycle rumble vanishes in the distance, Mason grabs his keys and runs to his car, determinate.

He hasn’t seen Liam cry since he was expelled from the old school and even then he didn’t see him as broken as that afternoon, not as betrayed at least.

Mason listened to him and tried to be calm and reassuring, he even spent hours laughing and joking losing to countless videogames because he was too distracted to actually pay attention to the screen, but now that he’s alone he doesn’t have to hold the anger hardening his jaw and whiting his knuckles as he tightens his grip on the wheel.

He’d like to find Theo and use his baseball bat on him, but Theo would rip it from his hand like that time in the tunnels and then maybe he’d rip his head too. And mostly, Mason doesn’t really want to do that, because that’s a Liam reaction and it’s infact what Liam already did that morning and more efficiently than what Mason, with his human strength, could ever, but it’s not what Liam needs and on the other hand what Mason can do, with his absolutely human strength and his capacity of staying calm, is digging to the heart of the problem and investigate and _understand_ before freaking out.

This is why Mason parks his car at the entry of the tunnels for the second time that day and he doesn’t walk out sooner than two hours later.

 

 

***

Liam realizes he actually fell asleep only when Mason’s agitated voice wakes him up from his torpor, immediately followed by his hands shaking his shoulders.

Liam lifts himself up, dazed, a hand rubbing his too dry eyes.

“What?” he murmurs hoarse, while Mason keeps pouring a rain of breathless words on him. One in particular immediately catches his attention, awaking the dozed anger in his chest. “Wait, _what?_ Why did you go to the labs?”

“I wanted to find out what Theo was looking for” Mason explains impatient, while Liam sinks his claws in the blankets, trying to control himself. He can’t believe Mason, among everyone, is doing that to him. “And I found it. Get mad later if you want, now just read this.”

Liam can’t simply get mad _later_ , it’s not how it works, except Mason just placed a messy dossier under his nose and Liam immediately opens it with shaky hands, without actually wanting to do it.

Mason stays quiet while Liam’s eyes run faster on the words, until they stop on a name. _Oh._

 

 

It’s weird, feeling absolutely relieved and incredibly worse in the same exact second. Something twists painfully in Liam’s chest.

 

 

***

When he came back to Beacon Hills, Theo had a plan.

A diabolic detailed plan to steal the true alpha Scott McCall’s power and pack, a malleable plan adjustable to circumstances because Theo foresaw every possibility, studying every single variant in the shadow of the underground labs, surrounded by the noises of the Dread Doctors machineries. This is why everything worked so perfectly, before it failed catastrophically.

What Theo could have never seen coming was that even after being defeated and put on his knees, Scott’s pack wasn’t going to abandon him.

He didn’t take into consideration loyalty, because he, who pushed his own sister from the bridge he’s sitting on, never understood loyalty.

Even when he found himself with a plan B and a pack of badly turned experiments –just like him – he underestimated once again the importance of loyalty and he didn’t worry about giving it or receiving it. And so he lost his pack and his perfect plan failed again. Theo saw everything slipping from his fingers for the second time, but he didn’t have the time to hurt because immediately Tara grabbed his ankle and started pulling.

 

This time, with just the noise of the river flowing indifferent several feets under his shoes dangling in the cold air of the night, he has all the time in the world.

It hurts especially because Theo didn’t even have a plan that could fail this time, he didn’t have hidden motives or parts to act, and still everything went to shit again. And it’s still his fault because the Dread Doctors always told him that without a plan you never get anything, that without being a step ahead of everyone, without expecting every move, yours and others', you’re an easy prey, and still Theo fell for it.

He came back from hell without a plan, without pretending or studying his moves in advance anymore, and this is the result.

_Being the bait._

Theo didn’t plan falling for Liam and this was his bigger mistake.

 

And that it’s him, when the bridges creaks next to him, he knows it even before lifting his eyes.

When he started living with him, Theo thought he would’ve never dirtied his hands with innocent blood again, but the truth is that he always knew he would have killed anyone who tried to send him back down there. Theo never thought it was something to hide, because even the righteous Scott, if he spent months of having his heart ripped from his chest infinite times, would snap the neck of whoever try to send him back there without thinking twice.

Theo would.

He’d kill Kira, he’d kill Malia and Stiles and Scott, and anyone else who’d come close to him with that sword. Theo would kill _himself_ rather than going back there.

Liam walks slowly towards him, the old wood creaking under his shoes, and he could pull the sword out at any moment but, Theo knows it, he’d never kill _him_. It’s stupid and irrational and he didn’t plan it, but Theo, the individualist for excellence, can’t find any survival instinct left in him in front of Liam’s blue eyes.

He knows there’s no way he already found a way to fix the sword, but he’s terrified by the fact that even if he did Theo would still not be able to hurt him.

 

 

***

Theo stands up, wary, like he expected to be hit again, and Liam feels his stomach dropping. He did that. The way Theo is looking at him now, it’s his fault.

Liam parts his lips but not a sound comes out. He knows Theo can hear his heart beating like crazy now, just like he can smell the anxiety and the guilt rolling off him. Liam can’t catch any signal from the other boy instead.

“You’re the most beautiful thing that happened to me this year.” Liam says it so fast that he has trouble understanding himself, but Theo widens his eyes. “I’m sorry I didn’t let you explain and I told you all those things and I’m sorry I hit you, it’s just that I had _a plan_ and suddenly you weren’t there and I didn’t know where you went and if you were okay and so I called Argent because something could have happened to you, and I felt so stupid but I couldn’t sleep without knowing if you were okay, and then Argent said...and I shouldn’t have even thought about that, I know, but I was terrified by the idea and I always think about the things that scare me and then I saw you there and I didn’t know what to do and you lied to me, and _I know_ why now, but I didn’t then and I got scared, and you said it to me that night in the car, maybe you don’t remember because it was a while ago but I remember everything you say, and that night you said that people only feel one emotion at a time and this is why I get angry when I’m afraid, and so I got so angry like never before and it’s not a justification” Liam breathes too loudly to be dignified, but he doesn’t care, not now. “I should have let you talk and you have the right to never speak to me again, and you can hit me if you want, as many times as you wish, unless you decide to hit me an uneven number of times because you know uneven numbers get on my nerves, and I’ll let you do it without moving a finger, but you _can’t_ not talk to me anymore, even if I just said that you can, I can’t let you do that, it’s beyond my psychophysical possibilities, even if I’m wrong and in theory you could, _you can’t_ because you’re my anchor and I think I’m yours, even if you never told me, and I’m not going to deprive myself of my anchor and deprive you of yours just because I was incredibly stupid.” Liam is breathless like he ran miles and miles and he feels his cheeks burning and he kinda wants to turn back and escape and never come back, instead he takes a deep breath and keeps going, because Theo is looking at him. “And you need to know that it was Mason the one who figured it out, not me, which makes me even more stupid and it means that I won’t bother you if you _actually_ don’t want to talk to me ever again, but I need you to come home tonight, because it was your home since the first time you stepped in, and it doesn’t matter what I said this morning, and I’ll sleep at Mason’s if you want or somewhere else, and my mom will be fine with it because she prefers you anyway, because you always clean the bathroom after you showered while I leave water everything and...” Liam should have thought about what to say before starting looking for Theo everywhere and maybe he would have came out with something calmer and more logical, but that’s how it is. “And I know you’d never hurt me, even if you said it, and I hope you know that I’d never try to fix the sword either, even if I said it, and if I ever fixed it it’d be just so I could break it again. And...can you _please_ say something?”

Liam’s voice is supplicant and Theo doesn’t even seem to notice, still busy staring at him with his lips parted and his eyes a little widen. Then he blinks and Liam would pay to know what he’s thinking, but Theo just lowers his head and goes back to sit on the edge of the bridge, his legs hanging above the dark creek. Liam stands there without moving, his heart beating fast in his chest.

“Okay.” Theo says quiet, his eyes absorbed in the dark water under him, after what it seemed like an eternity to Liam.

“Okay?” He repeats hesitant.

“I accept your apology.”

Liam hears a very weird sound coming out of him, a mix between someone holding his breath and someone letting it out.

“Even if it was awful?” he asks immediately, still too incredulous to give in to the relief that started wrapping around him.

“Even if it was awful” Theo keeps not looking at him, but his lips curl in the hint of a smile and Liam finally feels the weigh crashing his chest vanishing in the air. “Still better than the one I said to you. For Scott and everything.”

“But you never...”

“Exactly.”

“Oh.” Liam didn’t even think about the fact he was the first to forgive Theo for heavier things. He didn’t think about it for a second and he’s happy about it, because he already threw back enough things on his face that morning. Liam bites his lip, sitting next to Theo and glancing at him hesitant. “So you’ll come home?”

Theo finally meets his eyes. “Yes.”

“Okay” Liam sighs relieved, smiling. “Can I hug you? No sorry, it’s not fair, you’re right. Pretend I didn’t say it.”

Theo watches him a little longer and then he keeps looking at the water, shaking his head a little. He has the hint of a smile on his lips again and Liam hates what he’s about to do.

“Theo.” His fingers tighten around the thin fascicle of papers badly folded in his jacket pocket. Copies of articles, some terrifying pictures, short recaps scrawled in a hurry. They were just a couple of humans, but they still found a way to use their bodies. “What you were looking for among the Dread Doctor’s files...Mason found it.”

Liam extracts the papers from his pocket and he slowly hands them to him.

Theo looks at the white cover, but he doesn’t make any move to grab it. Instead he lifts his gaze on Liam, indecipherable. “Are they dead?”

Liam never felt so powerless in his life. “Yes” he murmurs. “For years. Right after...right after Tara.”

Theo goes back to stare in front of him, shrugging a bit. “I thought so. I just wanted to be sure. They said...the Dread Doctors said they moved out and they didn’t care about where I was.” Theo is not giving any signal, he doesn’t smell sad and his face stays blank. Liam still crawls his hand on the bridge, bringing it closer to Theo’s and brushing his pinkie with his. Theo immediately lowers his eyes on their hands, but he doesn’t move away. “I knew it wasn’t true” he continues and he moves his eyes on the papers, thoughtful. Then he grabs it. “I always knew. I just wanted to be sure.”

When Theo throws it in the water under them, watching it soaking and sinking slowly, Liam is relieved he didn’t open it. He’s relieved he didn’t see the pictures.

He moves a little closer and they stay quiet for a long time, until Liam clears his throat.   

“There’s a reason if I didn’t want to believe you.”

Theo lifts his eyes on him and Liam suddenly feels calmer, even if he shouldn’t, because he has no idea of what he’s doing.

“It’s not because I don’t trust you. It’s because I don’t trust _me,_ when it comes to you. I don’t trust my judgment when you’re concerned. I would’ve believed you if I entered, not because you’re a little evil genius so good at convincing people of whatever you want, but because I _wanted_ to believe you, too much, because I need to believe you’re real.” Liam inhales deeply. “Because I like you.”

He catches it distinctly, suddenly, a new chemosignal coming from Theo, but it’s now or never and Liam can’t focus like he’d like on the fact that he just managed to make him lower his guard.

“I like when you come to see my Lacrosse practice, even if you keep that bored expression the whole the time, as if you didn’t want to be there – and you probably actually  don’t, because you never understood a thing about Lacrosse. I’d like to teach you. I like when I’m done and we come back home together and you always have something to say about some action I did, like you could have done better. I don’t like when I have to invent thousands of excuses just to invite you to lunch with me and the others and I don’t like having to beg you to stay, but I like when you _do_ stay, I like when you’re with me, whether it's at home or the pool  or the groceries store, because everything makes a little more sense if you’re there too. I hate when you have nightmares and not because you don’t let me sleep, but I love that it’s my scent that calms you. I like when you wear my hoodie, even if you never played Lacrosse in your life. I like seeing Dunbar written on your back. I like when you sneak into my bed and I like falling asleep with your breath on my skin. I like waking up with your heartbeat in my ears and I like opening my eyes in the morning and seeing you. I hate that you’re so pretty even when you just woke up, but I adore that I’m the only one there to see it. I like hugging you and it drives me crazy when the others can smell my scent on you. I’d like if they could smell it all the time, I want them to know that you’re _mine_. I hate when they touch you and I hate having to pretend I don’t hate it. I like your eyes, especially when you’re looking at me. I like when I’m losing control and you appear out of nowhere to anchor me with your voice. I like that you’re my anchor and not a stupid mantra. I like that you’re the sun, the moon and the truth. I hate I just said something so embarrassing and that I’m jabbering so much because of you, as if we were in some teen drama with diabetic dialogues, but I’d die for the way you’re looking at me right now. I like your hair and I like when you laugh. I like it even more if I’m the one making you laugh. I like when you mock me and even when you punch me. I like the two moles you have on your chest and I like that your heart is beating almost faster than mine now and that you’re not hiding it. I like hugging you and I said this already, but I like it _a lot_. I like that you’re proud, I like how you’re able to keep your smug superior face even when you have no idea what you’re doing. I adore when you lose it because of the simplest things like being considered part of the group. I adore when you lose it because of _me._ I like your name, Theo, and I like the way you say mine. Sometimes you say it like it was an insult, but I still like how it sounds on your lips. I like your lips by the way. I like that the first time I saw you doing something that it wasn’t for you it was _for me_ , when you pushed me inside that elevator. I like that even if we never trained together, when we fight we don’t need words to be synchronized, but I’d also like to train with you. I like how you always think you’re being subtle and discrete, and how you actually are most of the time, but you keep staring at my lips so obviously. I like that you never noticed that I do it as well, just better. I hate that you still didn’t interrupt me with a punch or a kiss, whatever it is, but I love that you’re staring at my lips even now. I like how you immediately moved your eyes _and Theo_ , I hope you figured it out already because it’d be ridiculous at this point, but I like kissing you. I like kissing you and I’d like to do it even out of water. I’d like to kiss you at school in front of everyone and at home under the blankets, I can’t think a place in which I could possibly  _not_ want to kiss you actually, I want to kiss you at the school dance and I want to kiss you now, but I don’t want to do it if then we don’t talk about it and we pretend nothing happened. I don’t want it to be just another moment to not think about, I want it to be _real_ and important and-” Liam wanted to say something else, but Theo suddenly got closer and his lips press hard against his, his warm tongue moves in his mouth, his fingers tickle the back of his head and Liam immediately forgets it and he doesn’t even care, because how could it have been important when the only thing that matters in the world is kissing him right now?

Liam could slip from the bridge at any moment considered how little perception of the external world or even his own body he has right now, but Theo’s hands are pushing hard against his shoulders and suddenly the other boy parts from him, breaking the kiss, leaving Liam to automatically move his face forward, because _hell no_ , he wants more.

 _“Everything_ is real with you, idiot.” Theo whispers against his wet lips, looking right in his eyes, his hair for once messy brushing his forehead, beautiful like he’s always been, but at the same time like he has never been before. “It was always real, since I shoved you into that elevator.”

And Liam isn’t sure if he has anything to add, but again, it doesn’t really matter and there’s the unpleasant noise of teeth hitting against each other while Liam grabs his hair on the back of his head and pulls him closer, kissing him again, and he couldn’t care less, not about the cold or about Mason who’s waiting for news and who’s probably fricking out or about the metallic taste of blood mixed with saliva and Theo’s soft lips. 

 

 

***

Theo won’t talk for five minutes about all the things he likes about Liam, because that’s not the kind of person he is. But he tries to say everything in that kiss and he hopes Liam hears it anyway, even if he doesn’t say it out loud, that when Theo shoved him into that elevator before running towards the Ghost Riders, it wasn’t him the one saving Liam, but the opposite.

It was always Liam the one who saved him, every time, the first when he pulled him back from the ground and he didn’t step back not even in front of his own alpha, and the second, when he broke the sword without asking anyone first, despite having promised Kira’s mother to keep it safe, and the third, at the police station, when he grabbed his arm and pulled him close to him, choosing to run with him rather than without him, and again when he shot the Ghost Rider choking him and Theo turned to him not believing his eyes because he wasn’t useful for the pack anymore, because Liam just assured him he wasn’t going to move a finger to help him, because there was literally no reason to do it except the simple being a _good_ person, with no ulterior motives, like Liam always was, like Theo never was, not once in his life.

And in that moment Liam saved him in a way that was so much more than the simple being sure he kept breathing, it’s when Theo widened his eyes incredulous and then he slowly lifted his fist to bump it into Liam’s, instinctively and friendly, a fissure cracked his perfect shell of selfishness and disregard, even if he didn’t know it yet, and it was when a few seconds later he put Liam’s life before his, pressing the first floor button and letting the doors of the elevator close behind him, that Theo understood what people see in other people. What loyalty is.

It was then, while his eyes glowed yellow and his fangs appeared with a roar in his mouth, that he understood why sometimes humans are even ready to _die_ for each other. 

He heard Liam shouting and hitting his fists against the metallic doors of the elevator and he figured out what it’s stronger than survival instinct. He started running, alone against too many Ghost Riders, and suddenly he knew why Scott was so sure of himself when he assured him his pack would never turn his back on him. Theo always dreamt of a pack of his own, to lead and to order around, since the Dread Doctors implanted his sister’s heart in his chest, but only when he shoved Liam into the elevator he understood what _pack_ actually meant, and just then he really wanted it.

Liam ripped him away from Tara’s cold grip and from the Ghost Rider’s choking one, but that’s not the only way he saved his life. He saves it now too, returning his kiss and pulling him closer, impetuously, accidentally breaking his lip with his teeth.

Theo wouldn’t want it any other way.

 

 

 


	19. Never

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The translation of this chapter is a mess, sorry.

 

Liam did so many stupid things in his life he can’t even count them, but no one was as stupid as waiting so long, of that, while the cold wind can’t break the sudden warmth shielding him, he’s sure.

If he knew Theo would have kissed him like _that_ he wouldn’t have waited a second longer after the first kiss in the pool, he would have repeated to him how much he likes him every single day since then. But maybe Theo wouldn’t be kissing him with so much fervour if Liam hadn’t been stupid right until that moment, and so Liam is happy he was. Liam is just happy, if that’s how people call the way his heart floats in his chest and his head seems to be spinning around, as if it was fluctuating, especially when Theo stands and gives him his hand, pulling him on his feet.

 

His phone, abandoned on the bedside table hours before, keeps buzzing and Liam grabs it vaguely registering all the texts and missed calls, and he knows he’s being ungrateful as he turns it off without answering, that’s it only thanks to Mason if he feels like that now, but he can’t pretend he cares, not now.

Tomorrow. He’ll call him tomorrow and he’ll tell him everything, it’ll be the first thing he’ll do in the morning, and then he’ll have to tell the rest of the pack as well, if Isaac didn’t do it already, since he knows so much about other people’s sexual tensions, but tonight, tonight Liam wants it to be just theirs. He wants it to be their secret for a little longer, just a night where Mason doesn’t exist, nor Isaac or anything else except Theo walking out of the bathroom, his hair damp and his cheeks still flushed from the hot shower, and only a pair of tight boxer under the unfastened hoodie, white letters sticking out on the dark fabric on his back and forming the word Dunbar.

Liam swallows, finding the act of lifting his eyes on Theo’s unusually hard, as if his eyelids were suddenly made of iron. If that was the only hard thing, Liam wouldn’t feel so uncomfortable now.

Theo looks at him with the smirk of who knows perfectly how he looks like and he stands there a few more seconds before padding barefoot towards Liam’s bed, tanned skin stretching on the muscles of his legs at each step, away from the mattress on the floor behind him, totally ignored.

“Do you need a pair of sweatpants?” Liam asks immediately and it would have been nice if his voice had sounded calmer and just a bit less shrill.

Theo shrugs, stopping right in front of his bed. “Nah, it’s hot. Is it a problem for you?”

Liam thinks Theo in his bed with just a pair of boxer and nothing else except _his_ hoodie is a giant problem, but he forces himself to shake his head and moves towards the wall, making space for him under the blankets.

“No, of course not” he says while the mattress sinks already under Theo’s weight. “No problem at all.”

Theo lies down and he keeps shifting  next to him for awhile, before finding a satisfying position, cheek on the pillow and his back towards Liam. Then he tilts his head a bit and he throws him an amused glance. “Didn’t I showered enough, Dunbar?”

“Uh?” Liam murmurs a bit confused and a bit distracted.

“Do I smell? Is this why you keep your distance?”

Liam frantically shakes his head. “No, no, sorry.”

He doesn’t even know why he’s apologizing now, when Theo’s voice keeps sounding so amused, but immediately he moves from the wall he was pressed against, casually getting closer. He pulls himself a little upward, towards the headboard of the bed, and he barely brushes Theo’s shoulder with his chest, letting his hand sleep under Theo’s arm and resting it on the pillow next to him.

“Goodnight” he whispers before pressing a quick kiss against his neck, brushing his lobe with his nose and resting then his head on the pillow, immersed in Theo’s scent.

“Goodnight” Theo replies after a few seconds, still with that amused glimpse in his voice, before shifting again on the mattress, bending a little on his side and drastically pushing his ass back, against the bulge on Liam’s sweatpants. He did it on purpose. Liam _knows_ he did it on purpose, the asshole. “Or should I say _good morning.”_

Liam abruptly moves away, bringing both his shoulders against the mattress and planting his wide open eyes on the ceiling. “I usually sleep on my back” he hurries to explain. “We shouldn’t change ours habitudes, you know, and it’s good for your back to sleep like this anyway. You don’t mind, do you?”

“At all” Theo shrugs, indifferent. “I prefer sleeping next to the wall instead. You don’t mind, right?”

“No, of course” Liam lifts his chest to move aside and let Theo go past him, but Theo places his palms on his chest and shoves him back against the mattress, slowly climbing on top of him. Liam holds his breath and he wonders what he did wrong – _or good_ \- in his previous life to deserve this, and he waits for Theo to finally decide to bring his other leg on the other side of him as well, but Theo just stares at him from above and he doesn’t move, his knees pressed against the mattress at both sides of Liam’s waist. Then he smiles, Liam can barely see his teeth in the shadow of the room, and he releases all his weight from his knees to Liam’s waist, basically sitting on him.

 _“Theo.”_ Liam doesn’t even know what his voice is trying to communicate, a need or a warning.

“Yes, Liam?” It doesn’t seem like Theo plans to move and there’s no way he’s not _feeling_ it now. “Do you need something?”

Liam desperately tries to think. _Bathroom_ is a good answer. He could shove Theo away and run to the shower under the cold jet of water and never get out, it’s a smart and reasonable plan, that’s what he should do. But there’s something wrong in the idea of getting away from the bed right now, when Theo is sitting on him and it’s the pretties thing Liam ever saw in his life, covered only by his hoodie, with messy soft-looking hair and big mischievous eyes. It’s because of those eyes, Liam believes, even more than because of the muscular ass pressed against his clothed erection, that standing up seems so far beyond his capacities.

A sound half amused and half surprised escapes Theo’s lips when Liam grabs his shoulders and overturns in a second their positions, pinning him down against the mattress. Maybe he planned on making it something more than a sound, words with a logical sense even, but Liam doesn’t wait enough to find out because immediately his mouth is pressed on his, harshly, and Theo’s tongue is hot against his.  

When Liam lifts himself, parting unwillingly from him, his weight all on his palms at the sides of his head, Theo emits an unhappy protest.

Liam ignores him, looking for eye contact. “If you don’t want it, say it now.”

Theo meets his eyes and shakes his head a little exasperated, his full lips folded in a mocking smirk.

“Does it _look_ like I don’t want it, Dunbar?” He snorts before putting his hand on the back of Liam’s head and pulling him against him again. Liam doesn’t need anything else.

Theo’s skin, covered by a thin layer of sweat, is warm and a little salty under Liam’s tongue, and pleasantly sensible under his teeth. Liam barely sinks them in his shoulder, suppressing the instinct of going deeper and wetting it in red, marking him, and Theo moans arching his back and rubbing the distinct bulge in his boxer against the one in Liam’s sweatpants. The red mark of his teeth is visible on his tanned skin even when Liam lifts his head, because chimeras heal slower than werewolves, and Liam admires it satisfied for only a second before placing his lips on it, licking and leaving a trail of wet kisses from his shoulder to his neck, enjoying each and every one of Theo’s moans and shivers under him.

“ _Liam”_ He groans needy while he nips his lobe between his teeth and Liam never loved his name as he does now.

“Yes, Theo?” he murmurs, gently pushing his head to the side and going back to torment every inch of skin on his neck. “Do you need something?” He repeats his words mocking, pleasing himself with how Theo is the one breathless under him now, at the mercy of his bites and kisses.

Instead of answering, Theo just growls, lifting his leg and interlacing it with his, and Liam blocks his hand before he can touch himself, bringing both his wrists above his head, against the pillow. Theo doesn’t make a move to get free and he throws his head back, baring his throat and allowing Liam to cover it in sloppy kisses, from his chin to his adam’s apple and then down to his collarbone, until he’s taking the cold metal of the hoodie zipper, so conflicting with Theo’s hot skin, between his teeth and he starts pulling, slowly unzipping it. The two hems of the hoodie part gradually, showing the tan skin under it, smooth and covered in moles, and Liam’s nose brushes the soft fuzz starting under his belly button while he keeps descending, until the zip reaches the end with a click and the extremities of the hoodie part completely, softly falling at the sides of Theo’s sculpted bust. Liam parts his lips, letting the zipper slip out, and he lingers near the waist band of the boxer for a few seconds, barely touching the delicate skin disappearing under the black hem and placing a quick kiss on the neat fabric, moving away as soon as Theo lifts his hips against him, whining. Liam straightens himself and strips off his shirt with a fluid move, throwing it on the floor next o the bed, and he grabs Theo’s wrist as soon as he tries to do the same and takes off his hoodie.

“Keep it” he whispers decided, leaning down to place a kiss on his swollen lips. “I like seeing you in my clothes.”

Theo smiles and wraps his arms around his neck, pulling him down and biting the sensitive skin behind his ear. Liam shivers under his trail of slow kisses and warm breath and he immediately reciprocates, opening his hoodie furthermore and kissing the two moles on his chest, right on his heart, before descending in a trail of wet kisses on his stomach. “You know what you can take off?” he murmurs against his smooth skin, slowly caressing his hips until he’s pressing his fingers against the black fabric of his boxer.

“ _Liam”_ Theo repeats impatient, gripping a hand on his hair and Liam pulls down fast, revealing Theo’s turgid erection, the red tip already wet in excitation. With a fluid gesture he slides his boxer down to his ankles and Theo impatiently lifts his feet helping him getting rid of them.

Theo is completely naked under him now, except for his open hoodie, his eyes are watery and impatient and Liam feels his sweatpants tugging uncomfortably. He’s happy when Theo’s frantic hands move from his chest and his fingers slip under the band of both his pants and boxer, pulling them down at the same time without wasting a second. Theo’s mouth around his member is warm and wet and so different from Hayden’s, his tongue strokes him slower and firmer and among the moans Liam lets one of pain as well when he feels a flash of teeth. Theo throws him an apologizing look with his dick still buried in his mouth and Liam is too blinded by the feeling of his throat to think that probably it’s his first time. In a way it’s his as well, with a guy at least.

It’s such a familiar feeling but at the same time it’s completely new and Liam doesn’t think he ever felt anything like that in his life and he’d like to just let go and come with his fingers in Theo’s soft hair and his warm mouth around him, but he forces himself to grip his hair tighter and pull him back after a while. “Not like this” he answers to his confused glance, pushing him back and stretching above him, towards the drawer next to his bed.

To the smell of sperm and arousal, almost overwhelming to his werewolves senses, he adds the fresh one of the lubricant. Liam is already about to explode, but he still imposes himself to proceed slowly,  searching Theo’s eyes before every move and giving him plenty of time to get used to each finger before adding the next one, because he wants it to be perfect and enjoyable for both of them, but Theo is more impatient than him and he keeps repeating his name frantic, between a pleading and an order. His legs wraps tight around his waist when Liam enters inside him, his heels pressing hard against his butt cheeks and his nails scratching his back, a bit too much deeper to still be simply human nails. It hurts, but Liam hopes Theo never stops and he slowly kisses his neck, inebriating himself in his scent, waiting for him to get used to his presence inside him, and it’s just when he hears his name slipping Theo’s lips once again in a warm begging whisper against his cheek that he slowly starts moving.

Liam wonders if there’s something else in life besides the way Theo keeps calling his name at each trust, arching his hips to meet his movements like his life depended on it. He wonders how he could even think of living without this until a few hours before, how he thought he could go on without ever seeing Theo letting go so completely under him, without walls or smug grins, without eyes avoiding his or mocking laughs, without any barrier between their naked skin.

Of all the lies and the unsaid and the stupid bickering and all the hidden smiles, it remains only heavy breaths and watery eyes constantly looking for each other, it remains messy hair and finger gripping it so tight they turn white, it remains Theo who keeps repeating his name and Liam answering back, but he has to bite his lips to stop himself from adding that he loves him, that he doesn’t care if it’s soon, he just loves him and he’ll always do it. It remains Theo’s hot sticky sperm erupting against his stomach shortly before Liam comes inside him, emptying himself but feeling full of so many things exploding in his heart when he collapses on Theo’s sweaty chest and the other boy immediately starts covering him in sloppy kisses. Liam stays slumped on him, worn out and with no hurry of pulling out of him, and when he eventually does it, he immediately pulls Theo closer, hugging him tight because it’s suddenly a bit cold now. They should get up and take a shower, change the sheets because they’re a mess, they should maybe talk, but Liam doesn’t feel like doing any of that or anything that it’s not standing there in bed with his limbs tangled to Theo’s, still surrounded by the prickly smell of their love. And Theo doesn’t seem in a hurry of moving or talking as well, he just rests his head on his shoulder and he keeps tickling Liam’s neck with his nose, inhaling deeply and smiling.

Liam spent weeks trying so hard not to think and it was tiring and frustrating, but now it seems like the easiest thing in the world. Maybe it’s because, he sees it now for the first time, there’s nothing to think about. It’s the two of them, Liam and Theo, just like they always were, and it’s as simple as that.

 

 

 

***

 

Liam doesn’t know after how long exactly he speaks again, his lips moving slowly against Theo’s temple.

“Scott says I’m your alpha.”

Theo lifts his head to look at him, his sleepy eyes immediately focusing. “What?”

“That even if I’m not an alpha yet, I’m already your alpha.” Liam clears his voice a little uncomfortable. He has no idea of how Theo could react. “And Mason and Corey’s. Nolan’s too, maybe.”

Theo blinks and keeps staring at him, still, for several seconds. He’s completely naked against him except for the hoodie still unfastened on his chest, but Liam can’t pick anything, nor a fastening in his heartbeat nor any other chemosignal.

“Okay” he nods after awhile, going back to rest his head on his shoulder and wrapping his arm around his chest a little tighter.

Liam looks at him confused. “Okay? What do you mean okay? Are you okay with me being...your alpha?”

“I came back to Beacon Hills for a pack, Liam.” Theo shrugs, quiet, a smile barely curling the corner of his mouth. “I found it.”

Liam knows Theo is perfectly capable of hearing his heart quickening frantically in his chest, just like the emotion rolling off him and assailing his nostrils, but he doesn’t care right now, he probably should see the effect he has on him anyway. Theo _wants_ Liam to be his alpha. Even if he came back to Beacon Hills with the only purpose of getting the red eyes at any price, willing to steal anyone’s power in order to be the strongest, now he’s just happy to be officially part of a pack, of his pack. Theo wants to be his and Liam realizes just now that he always was, that he would have been anyway, even if Scott didn’t come back to town to say it out loud. Theo belongs to him, just like Liam always belonged to Theo.

“And that doesn’t mean you can let it go to your head and order me around or anything like that, little one.”

Liam snorts, shaking his head. _Little one_. He didn’t think so until a few minutes before, while he panted his name between the moans.

“I’m not so optimistic to think I can tell you what to do, Theo.” Liam reassures him realistically, because after all he took days only to convince him to give him a ride to school after literally putting a roof over his head. “Except, well, things like don’t talk to Sarah anymore in front of me. I can tell you this” he corrects himself thoughtful, playing with the laces of Theo’s hoodie, while Theo’s fingers lazily draw circles on the back of his other hand. “Not as your alpha, but as your boyfriend.”

This time Liam can hear perfectly Theo’s heart missing a beat, while the fingertips on his hand stop their draws for a second and lightly squeeze his palm. Then Theo goes back to fiddle and when he speaks his voice is forcedly light-hearted, as if he didn’t care about the answer. “Uh, you’re my boyfriend then?”

“This is why we’re hugging naked in bed, genius” Liam playfully bites his lobe, chuckling. “And this is why there’s written Dunbar on your back. Because I’m your boyfriend. And you’re mine.” Liam’s lips did everything on their own and he suddenly stops them, clearing his throat hesitant. “I mean, if you want to.”

Theo lifts himself and bring his eyes in front of his, his still red and swollen lips pressed one against the other holding a smirk. Liam never found him as beautiful as now.

“I’ve been your boyfriend for weeks Dunbar” he whispers a few inches from his face, his warm breath brushing his lips, making him shiver. Theo looks at him for a few more seconds, before smiling mocking. “This is why we just had sex, genius.”

Liam snorts and he’s about to shove him away, but Theo grabs his hands and leans forward, covering the short distance between their faces, kissing him deep. Liam always had this tendency at being a little dramatic, he’s aware of it, but he doesn’t believe he’ll ever get used to the feeling of Theo’s tongue between his lips, not even if they kept kissing for the next thousand years.

Nobody can’t say Liam is not ready to question himself tough, which is why he’s willing to test his theory and keep kissing Theo until the end of time just to make sure it keeps being so good every single time.

Closing his eyes, he totally abandons himself to the kiss and he sinks his fingers in Theo’s soft hair, sneaking his other hand under his hoodie, on his naked skin, caressing it slowly until he’s squeezing his butt cheek with satisfaction. Theo jumps a little and he smiles against his lips, before sinking his teeth in Liam’s lower lip making it bleed, while Liam doesn’t lose his grip on his butt. Instead he sneaks down his other hand as well, in one of the best moments of his short staying on planet Earth, immediately followed by one of the worst, just to immediately balance the situation, because god forbid Liam to forget that too happiness is not allowed.

“Oh _thank god.”_

It’s weird how the instinct of killing Mason is so totalizing now, when until a few hours before Liam felt an unspeakable gratitude for his best friend.

“Mason, fuck!” he snaps hurrying in grabbing the blankets and covering himself and Theo as best as he can. To cover the fact that they’re in bed together instead, that they were kissing and touching each other and the amount of clothing the two of them are wearing is limited to a opened hoodie, all the blankets in the world wouldn’t be enough.

“Well, I should have knocked I guess” Mason, still on the door, clears his throat and he vaguely smells embarrassed, but mostly euphoric. “I was worried because you didn’t answer your phone and I was afraid you killed each other or...well, I see you made peace anyway. All’s well that ends well.”

_“They didn’t make peace, they made sex, I can smell it from here!”_

Liam widens his eyes, incredulous in hearing the voice coming from downstairs.

It’s not happening, this is not happening. Isaac Lahey didn’t just materialize in his house right after his first time with Theo, except this is exactly what just happened, as if he was attracted from the smell of sex in the house, he and his damn natural thermometer registering other people’s sexual tensions.

“ _What?! Liam what-hey, let me go, I need to-”_

Theo has the nerve to chuckle happily at this point, like the fact that Isaac and _Stiles_ are there is a funny joke and not a tragic sign of fate falling down on them.

“ _Don’t go ruin their first time, with all the sexual tension they had to resolve it’s likely that they need a round two already.”_

Liam won’t accept to be disrespected in his own home from a guy who appositely came back from France to talk about his sexual life to everyone and he’s just about to stand up and run to punch them both, except he’s not wearing any underwear and his stomach is still sticky and covered in sperm and Liam can’t actually do anything else beside lying there and let people disrespect him in his own home.

“Mason, throw them _out_ ” he growls, involuntary letting his eyes glow gold, or at least he guessed it happened judging by how fast Mason nods.

“Of course, we’re all leaving now.”

_“Yes, let’s go, Jackson and Ethan own me fifty dollars!”_

Mason wraps his fingers around the handle and he starts closing the door behind him, before stopping and stilling there hesitant for a few seconds, before turning back and reaching the bed with a few quick steps. Liam finds himself with his arms around his neck before he can even blinks.

“I’m really happy for you, Liam.”

Mason’s heartbeat is steady, not that Liam needs confirmation to know that he’s not lying and for a second he returns the hug back with a smile, before loudly clearing his throat.

“Thanks, Mase. I appreciate it, really. But I’m naked next to my equally naked boyfriend and you’ve been hugging me for a minute now.”

Mason leaves him immediately.

“Right” he chuckles and then he frowns, wrinkling his nose, now so much closer to the dirty sheets. Oh no. “ _Oh._ Oh god. Okay!”

Mason runs to the door, closing it behind him without looking back and Liam can hear his quick steps running down the stairs with record speed.

“Oh god” He whines, covering his eyes in embarrassment. Fuck friendship and trust, the first thing he’ll do tomorrow morning will be asking for Mason’s spare keys back. “ _Uuugh.”_

Theo, who doesn’t seem bothered at all that he has just been caught naked in blankets still dirty of dry cum, giggles and enjoys Liam’s desperate sounds for awhile, before gently pushing his hands away from his face.

“Do you regret it?” He asks still with a smirk on his lips, but his eyes are wary and serious. Liam lifts his gaze on him, immediately aware that he’s not the stupidest person in the room, like he wrongly thought until a few seconds before for not sending at least a text to Mason before turning his phone off.

“That I didn’t drown Isaac in the pool when I had the chance?” He replies with a smile, tilting his head to the side. “Absolutely.” Theo shakes his head and from his lips comes out something in the middle between a sigh and a laugh. Liam touches his cheek, brushing it a little, before taking his chin between his thumb and index and forcing him to look him in the eyes. “ _This?_   Never.”

 

It’s still not been a thousand years, but Liam’s heart does the exact same jump of always when Theo kisses him.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was my first (and last) time writing smut, so I'm not going to blame it on the language thing, it was awful in the original too, but now I butchered it even more. Sorry again.


	20. EPILOGUE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We made it to the last chapter! Thanks for all the love!

  

**_Six months later._ **

 

 

“Theo, come on! We’re late!”

Liam screams exasperated for the umpteenth time, before bringing back his gaze on the mirror in front of him, with a sigh.

It’s not late, they’re perfectly on time actually, technically it’s even too early, but the smooth surface of the mirror reflects, beside his pouting expression, the distressing image of his hands fighting restless with his tie, still so clearly unfastened.

It bothers him incredibly that that piece of fabric just lies there, abandoned against his neck, and is the clear demonstration of his defeating and so he calls his boyfriend one more time, because Theo surely knows how to tie it, since he always seems to know how to do everything, except playing Lacrosse, that Liam still hasn’t been able to teach him. Why it’s so important to wear a tie, Liam has no idea: it’s not a funeral or a wedding, nobody will get mad at him if he won’t tie a piece of fabric around his neck, when he already accepted of wearing a blinding white dress shirt and his most elegant suit –fine, his _only_ elegant suit. The jacket, shiny black, forms a weird contrast with Liam’s pale skin and he would have rebelled the imposition of wearing a tie as well, but Mason will already have to forgive his hair, he doesn’t want to test his anger even more. The hair was an accident by the way, Liam had good intentions when he stole some of Theo’s gel trying to give some logic to his hair for that evening, pulling them back like he often saw in men more elegant then him, which is actually a definition true for every man on the planet.

Liam is not even sure they’re actually a disaster. They’re all pushed back on his head and he didn’t use too much gel because they don’t look wet or anything, and he didn’t use too little, because there’s not a single rebel strand tickling his forehead, but still, Liam finds terrifying looking at himself in the mirror right now. Maybe it’s not a disaster, but it’s not _his_ hair and it looks weird seeing him on his head, like he stole a wig from someone.

But it’s the end-of-the-year dance and Liam wants to be gorgeous and elegant, because Theo on the other hand will, and so he stops staring uncomfortably at his hair and continues his fight with his tie, trying to follow the same principles at the base of lacing your shoes, failing big way.

“Liam, what are you doing, it’s not a papillion, undo that bow.”

Liam is perfectly aware of the differences between ties and papillions, of which the principal is that it’s not a papillion the one he’s just about to throw against his boyfriend because if he hurried getting dressed and came down sooner then Liam wouldn’t have risked to choke on a piece of fabric, but as soon as he turns his irritation dies on his lips, letting them free to part in shock. Just for a few seconds, because Liam _has_ a dignity, even in front of Theo who comes downstairs all dressed up in his light blue suit and his white dress shirt a little too transparent on his chest, like a second skin.

Liam is sure he did it on purpose, choosing a suit of the same shade of blue of his eyes, because clearly it was always a lie between them and Theo is still trying to kill people, in particularly Liam.

His hair, no need to say it, doesn’t look like a stolen wig and it’s perfect as always, shiny and styled with no effort, because Theo never has to spend hours in front of the mirror in order not to look like he has dead animals on his head, unlike Liam.

Liam is so mad at him right now. He can’t believe he has the nerve to come downstairs looking like this, like the fricking prince charming, while Liam can’t even laces his tie without choking.

This is why he can’t breathe now, because the tangle of fabric that trapped his hand too is too tight around his throat. Liam feels a little better knowing that he’s still not at the point where he _literally_ runs out of breath in front of his boyfriend’s beauty, even if choking because of a tie is not that much better to be honest.

Theo’s hands barely brush his skin while he unties the mess around his neck and places the tie where it should be in a few simple gestures, making it look like a child game, because sure, let’s make your boyfriend look like a total idiot, why not.

“Here.” Theo smiles satisfied, stepping back and admiring his work. Then he steps closer again and he slips it off his neck. “Actually, don’t wear it.”

Liam frowns confused. “Mason said-”

“Mason is not here now.” Theo shrugs and Liam immediately feels more relaxed and free, like a dog who just took off his lash, at least until Theo’s smile becomes a grin and Liam feels the indignation runs through him.

“What did you do to your hair?” he chuckles glancing at it.

“Shut up.”

Theo actually shuts up, but just because he’s now busy running a hand through his hair, ruffling them and instantly cancelling Liam’s forty minutes of work. Liam doesn’t escape his touch, because deep down he’s actually very positive to every action against his weird styling, but when Theo is done he looks at himself in the mirror, facing a situation even more unmanageable than usual.

“It looks like there’s a dead skunk on my head now” he sighs miserable. Mason will pretend he doesn’t know him, he can bet. “A dead skunk inside some other animal’s nest.”

“Exactly, now you look like you.”

Theo smiles and Liam would get offended if his teeth weren’t so white and his eyes so blue, all happy when he’s looking at him, and so instead he just covers the distance between them and gives him a quick kiss, smiling against his lips.

And who cares if Liam will go to the dance with a dead skunk on his head at the end of the day, his boyfriend’s hair is already pretty and dignified enough for both of them.

 

 

***

 

“Liam what the hell happened to your hair?”

“Fuck you Mason.”

Liam glares at his best friend because this is not the support he expects from his friends – well, yes, this is _exactly_ what he expects from them actually, but not what he deserves. Mason is too busy staring at Theo to pay attention to his glare tough.

“Theo, if it wasn’t for Corey I would’ve jumped on you already.”  
Liam almost chokes on his own saliva while Theo chuckles all happy with himself, the asshole.

“Excuse me?”

Mason turns to Liam, shrugging. “I said that if it wasn’t for Corey I would’ve jumped on him already.”

“ _Excuse me?”_

“Oh, and for you, right” Mason finally realizes, sparing Liam from the pain of having to kill his own best friend. Not that it would have been this big tragedy anyway, since he’s been so quick to point out the state of his hair.

“Especially because if it was for me we would have both jumped on him already” Corey adds innocently and Liam chokes again, this time not in saliva but in indignation.

“Okay, enough, come on” he snaps grabbing his boyfriend and shoving him towards the opposite side of the gym, far from those perverts of his friends. “Let’s go grab something to drink.”

“Hey don’t shove, it’s not my fault if I’m irresistible, what can I do.” Theo keeps giggling so satisfied and Liam has to keep himself from punching him. Then a blonde mass of hair enters his sight and Liam can see the _h_ in her name even from ten feets apart.

“I can’t believe it, it’s Sarah!” he mutters annoyed.

“Unbelievable” Liam takes several seconds to spot the sarcasm in his boyfriend’s voice and realize he’s not actually agreeing with him. “How rude of her to show up to the dance of the school she’s a part of!”

“She’s staring at you” Liam points out, his voice dangerously close to a growl.

To be fair, there’s a guy dancing in a ridiculous blatant way exactly behind them and there’s the concrete possibility that Sarah and her friends are looking at him, because now that he noticed him Liam too is tempted to watch his bizarre dance moves for the rest of his life, but still a part of him keeps projecting on his retinas, full HD and everything, the memory of Sarah’s arms around Theo’s neck and the way he kissed her while staring at him.

“Let her watch then.” Theo’s voice is a whisper against his lips and Liam didn’t notice he got so close, but a second later his boyfriend is kissing him in front of everyone and Liam doesn’t care anymore how many h Sarah has in his name or if she’s watching them or Greenbergh and his weird break dance, because this time he’s the one running his arms around Theo’s neck and returning his kiss with fervour.

 

“ _Disgusting, take a room!”_

_“Leave them alone Stiles.”_

_“Shut up Isaac. I can’t believe it, the last time I’ve been here he wanted to kill him and now this. I’m so disappointed.”_

_“What did you go to the FBI for if you can’t even localize a sexual tension so evident right under your nose, mh?”_

_“And you what did you go to France for if you’re always here anyway? Seriously, the next time you visit Beacon Hills warn me before so I cancel my plane. And take that scarf off, it’s eighty degrees here.”_

_“It’s silk.”_

 

 

_***_

 

When the sweet notes of a slow dance start filling the room and the dance floor crowds with hugging couples, Theo turns hesitant to Liam.

“You want to dance?”

“No.”

“Thank God.”

 

 

***

 

Liam is serving himself some punch while he waits for Theo to come back from the bathroom so they can both join the others for some pictures and when his boyfriend suddenly materializes himself next to him grabbing his wrist, the red liquid in his glass spills on the white tablecloth. Liam would feel bad, if he wasn’t too busy elaborating the meaning of the words that just came out from Theo’s mouth.

“Let’s steal a bike” he said and Liam frowns and he’s just about to ask _why_ , but the memories follow each other like a flash in his mind, the Halloween party and the run on the stairs, the little red cape flying on his back while he jumps on the bike behind Theo, clinging to him, the excitement of throwing his clothes on the floor, the apnoea, Theo’s hair swaying underwater, his big eyes fixed on his, the girl’s scream piercing his ears while he still has Theo’s taste on his tongue, his naked warm shoulder against his wet lips while the wind slaps his face and his wet hair whips his forehead, the laughs.

And so his answer doesn’t sound like _why_ but like _okay_ and he can see the same adrenaline in his boyfriend’s eyes and the same well hidden smile on his lips, just for a few seconds before their schoolmates’ bodies start bumping into them and Theo keeps dragging him towards the exit, deaf to Mason’s confused call. Liam lets Theo dragging him until the parking lot and then he starts running as well, and he didn’t notice he was laughing already. He’s the one pulling Theo towards a red bike and he’s the one glowing his eyes a supernatural yellow and ripping the chain, while Theo jumps on the saddle and prompts him to hurry, with the same frenzy of the first time, as if they didn’t have all the time in the world.

Liam thinks all the time in the world is still too short and so he hurries climbing the bike as well while Theo already started pedalling slowly, and he wraps his arm around his waist to steady himself and because it feels good. His supernatural hearing absently informs him that someone is screaming something at them from the parking lot and Liam knows they should have been more careful and that tomorrow they’ll be in deep shit, but Theo pedals faster and faster and Liam knows where he’s going, even before they jump down the bike letting it fall on the grass.

The little window on the pool is closed this time and slows them down for the twenty seconds they take to force it. Liam sneaks in first and he tightens his finger around the little sill while he slowly lowers himself inside, stretching his feet trying to touch the floor: he didn’t remember it was so high.

He turns back a bit to check if he can let himself go without falling for miles and miles in the depth of the Earth, but Theo, still on the other side, blocks his wrists closing his hands around them and Liam turns confused to him, still hanging uncomfortably.

“I’m in love with you since the first time you fell from this window” He says like it was nothing and Liam widens his eyes, because in six months they still never said that and his heart misses a beat while Theo presses a quick kiss on his lips, before tightening his fingers around his wrist even more and suddenly shoving them away from the sill, letting him fall.

Liam lands on his back against the cold floor and he lies there without breath for several seconds, Theo’s words still echoing in his ears. Theo just landed more graciously next to him and he’s quickly toeing his shoes off, throwing them in a corner.

Liam, still aching, stands up and reaches Theo, helping him frantically strip from his blue jacket, before stopping his hands from unzipping his pants, moving them aside. Theo lifts his eyes in his and Liam runs a hand through his hair, ruffling them, because there’s no need for him to always be so perfect.

“I love you too, asshole” Liam says and he takes a second to enjoy the way Theo’s face lightens up and how he  immediately leans closer, his lips demanding and impatient, and then he enjoys it even more while he presses his hands hard against his shoulders and a spray of water raises in front of him, wetting the edge of his shoes.

When Theo resurfaces, Liam already got free of the majority of his clothes and he’s fighting against his shirt buttons that are so _slow_ , but when his eyes fall on the way the only other shirt in the room, the one his boyfriend is still wearing, stuck on his skin now that it’s wet, completely transparent on the stretched muscles of his shoulders while Theo swims, Liam stops worrying about that and jumps as well, because there are worst thing than wetting a shirt, things like keep being out of the pool when Theo looks like that.

 

 

When Liam reaches him in a few swims, Theo smiles at him and then he rest his feet on the bottom of the pool, the water barely brushing his chest now that he’s standing. Liam copies him and Theo lingers his eyes on his still partially unbuttoned shirt just for a few seconds, before lifting them on his, a little smirk curling the corner of his mouth.

“Apnoea contest?” he proposes, stepping closer.

Liam stares at his eyes so carefree and different from the tormented ones of the boy who screamed against annoying deputies under his window in the middle of the night months before. Those same eyes that made him fall for him before everything else, when he still didn’t realize it.

Then he lowers his gaze on the full lips made shiny by the little drops of water covering them.

“Apnoea contest” He agrees stepping forward, wrapping his arms around Theo’s neck.

They don’t go underwater this time, but they still hold their breaths long enough. 

  

 

 


End file.
